Vancouver, Canada: Day 3 and 4

Day 3
Greg and mom wanted to be in nature on Greg’s day off thus we decided to go to the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens. We arrived to find it closed because of a Labour Disruption (Strike). Our next choice was to go to the beach, so off we went. First we drove along the coast and stopped to look out over the bay at a viewpoint thinking it was going to be a beautiful sight. Instead, we looked out over a logging storage facility in the water. We drove on and came to a pretty park/beach where it was all grass except for a little sliver of rocks and sand. We sat on a large log and took in the view of Vancouver for a little while. I touched the water and found it to be a bit on the chilly side. As we walked along the small sliver increased to regular Los Angeles beach width. We walked back to our little Hyundai rent-a-car and drove to West 4th St. West 4th is a really nice street with lots of hip cute shops. There was an Organic Pie Restaurant so naturally, Greg was drawn in. We had salad and 2 different pies; Chocolate Raspberry and Peach. They were both very good but I liked the Chocolate better. Just across the Street was Banyan Books. It was a nice shop that had some really cool, medieval journals. The bookstore contained mostly spiritual oriented material including crystals, incense, craved wooden boxes and music. After wondering about the shop the three of us listened to music and then walked down the street. Mom was keen to take us to her favorite shoe store on West 4th which had amazing shoes by this company called Cydwoq. After gazing at those for a while we continued our walk down the street. Once we were done we went shopping for food at a Whole Foods like store called Capers. We got a bunch of really good things including chocolate-chip waffles. Once we got home we unpacked our food then went to a really good asian restaurant called Avia. The food was very good, we had two types of Roti; which are light flat unleavened bread, vegetable curry and chicken satay. We then returned home and had our coconut Roti with blueberries and apricots. Mom and Greg had missed my play, “Loves Labors Lost”, so, after our dessert we watched it. Then I went to sleep.

Day 4
It was Greg’s first day back at work, and it was rainy, cloudy and cold. Greg came back at 12:00 to eat lunch so mom made lentils and cucumber salad. Once Greg left mom and I finished listening to Harry Potter 6 and started the book 7 on CD. After a little while we decided to go out and walk around the city a little bit. We borrowed an umbrella from the Hotel, but it turned out that we didn’t need it! First we went to find the post office, we got a little confused, but found it eventually. Then we went to a bookstore called Chapters. I wanted to get the book Fruits Basket Volume 17, but they didn’t have it. Across the street was a large Sears. It wasn’t a normal Sears, it was large and classy. We looked around for a while then walked into the mall it was connected to. Back on the street they were filming a TV show called “The L Word”. Across from the film crews was a REALLY nice and expensive department store. I saw an AMAZING green knitted dress, but it was $475 dollars. Mom and I looked at the expensive clothes then walked out the other entrance. As we walked back the way we came, we saw that all the people on the bottom level of the store we had just left were frozen like mannequins. They were filming right in front of the building. There was a whole crowd of people watching so it took us a few minutes to get through. Next we went to a nice boutique down the street called Buffalo David Bitten. There were these really cool suspender-like shorts and an orange tunic shirt that I really liked. Walking along I found this really cute white shirt. We needed some more things from the market so we walked about five blocks over to the Capers near our hotel. We bought a few things then walked over to a kitchen store. Then mom and I headed home. Greg arrived within a few minutes of us and we had tea, panini toast with some excellent butter. Greg went to the gym while mom and I continued listening to HP7 while preparing dinner. Our dinner consisted of ground turkey, green salad and red potatoes. It was very good. For dessert Greg combined fresh farmers market blueberries with chocolate-chip waffles. Amazing!
While mom and Greg worked on billing things, I worked on a script that dad and I are writing together. I wrote a page then gave dad a call. I talked to him for about 20 minutes, wrote my blog, then read a few pages and went to sleep.