gardenofwine.com

Hampton Inn, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Odometer – 7721

Click here for Pictures

Shabbat Shalom.

Today it rained most of the time. We therefore planned indoor activities and went out whenever the sky let up for a bit. At the hotel we got up around 9:30am, and barely made it to the nice breakfast served till 10am.

When we got out of the hotel there was no rain, so we started walking up Robson street, THE street of downtown. After 4 blocks it started to rain. Luckily we were right in front of the Vancouver Art Museum, so we stepped in.

We spent 3 hours at the museum, covering all the galleries. The first and most impressive was an exhibit of Impressionist art dubbed “From Monet to Dali” on loan from the Cleveland Museum of Art. It was a good collection and by the end of the exhibit Ron already knew about Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso’s Blue Period and Rodin’s Thinker.

The rest of the exhibits were of modern art and modern Canadian art. Thankfully Shir and Orr fell asleep in the stroller and Ron was a good sport.

We walked in the rain for a few blocks to a recommended Italian eatery, Lombardo’s, but it was not such a big hit. We then entered a large underground shopping mall to bide the time and happily after an hour the skies cleared up a bit.

So we walked to Canada Place, on the waterfront. It is a convention center and has an IMAX theatre as well. It is uniquely shaped to resemble the cruise ships that harbor on either side of it.

After a bit of a debate we decided to take the kids to the IMAX to see a 45 minute movie about the deep sea. IMAX screens are huge, and with the 3D glasses provided you feel immersed in the scenes. The kids enjoyed most of the movie, although there were a few scary parts when a big fish preyed on a smaller one, or a giant squid swam out to grab the audience that cause a little jolt of crying in the kids. Luckily they got over the traumas within a minute and continued to watch the movie happily.

After the movie we continued to enjoy the dry air and walked across to Gastown and to Chinatown. We kind of walked into a bad neighborhood as well in between, but nothing as scary as the IMAX, just some homeless folks, drug addicts, and a scantily dressed woman stopping cars…

In Chinatown we found a night market that was just opening up and the kids had a fun time drinking coconut milk straight out of the nut. It started raining so we hurried back to the hotel area, where we settled on a Swiss-French restaurant that was not a big hit either. Culinary strike 2 for the day.

At the hotel room Ron and Orr bath together, but Shir gets a special bath of her own due to the cast. The kids like being in the hotel and jumping on the beds. The room is much larger than the RV and has a good view of the city (we are on the 14^th floor). Ron has built a fortress out of pillows for himself and Jinja, his pet stuffed dog. But he still isn’t falling asleep.

The forecast for tomorrow is more rain. Oy Vey.

-Hemi

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Big Trip, British Columbia, Canada, North America RV 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.