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On Tuesday, June 11, and not believing that it had not rained on our trip yet, we asked the hotel for a couple of complimentary bicycles and were told that only one was available but the other one should be available soon. So in the meantime we took the aquabus from the foot of Davie Street in Yaletown to the Public Market on Granville Island, False Creek, where a former industrial site was long ago converted into an indoor public market. There we tried the local delicacy “smoked salmon candy”, and bought some local culinary specialities at Canada Eatery. I also learned about the Inukshuk, the Inuit anthropomorphic statues (that’s what Inukshuk means in Inuit) used to warn of danger, mark places of respect, or simply show the way.

As soon as the hotel called us to let us know that both our bicycles were available, we headed back, got them, and rode to Stanley Park. Over a thousand acres of one of the world’s best and most beautiful city natural parks established in 1896, with a path (one-way-only for bicycles) at the water`s edge. Past some nice beaches, with logs on them as benches, with the required couple-in-love sitting on each of them, and a real Inukshuk, we saw geese, ducks, swans, First Nations totem poles… all among the most beautiful and tall cedar, hemlock, and fir trees and flowers. A very spectacular and lovely park, worth every minute of the hour and a half that it took us to ride around them.

After returning the bikes, we walked through the West End to our dinner at the less than memorable Raincity Grill (although all its products are sourced locally and responsibly, and it features a “100 Mile” menu with food harvested, caught, or grown within 100 miles of Vancouver).