Rocky Mountain High: Cascading to Vancouver ~ October 5 - 8, 2018

Cascading to Vancouver

October 5 -8 , 2018

Friday, October 5, 2018

When I started planning this trip I wasn't quite sure how we would get from Seattle to Vancouver.  When we took the Coast Starlight many years ago, Amtrak advertised it as going from Vancouver to Los Angeles, but disappointingly, we were bussed at the crack of dawn (literally the bus left at 5:00 a.m.) to Seattle.  So this time I wanted to make sure that we would be able to ride along the coast.  I quickly found the Amtrak Cascades train, which runs between Eugene, Oregon and Vancouver.  

According to Wikipedia, "service is provided using articulated trainsets manufactured by Talgo, a Spanish company."  The cars are designed to "passively tilt into curves" which allows the train to travel at higher speeds than a conventional train.  Our train was NOT one of these Talgo trainsets, which meant that we did not travel as fast as the normal trains, which meant that we were late getting into Vancouver.

King Street Station, Seattle

 The King Street Station is a beautiful building with exquisite craftsmanship.  It was designed by the firm of Reed and Stern of St. Paul, Minnesota and was constructed between 1904 and 1906 by the Northern Pacific and the Great Northern Railways.  The 242 foot tower was modeled after Campanile di San Marco in Venice and contains four huge mechanical clock faces built by E. Howard & Co. of Boston.  Like many railway stations, King Street Station fell into disrepair over the years and modernization led to covering up the beautifully carved and coffered ceilings.  In 2003 a restoration project began.  The Compass Room and restrooms were refurbished, exterior awnings were replaced, new mahogany entry doors and wood framed windows were installed.  New brass door hardware and reproduction period light fixtures were added, and plaster decorative work was done in order to reproduce the former character of the interior of the station.  Repairs to the clocks were completed in 2008.  It is a beautiful building!  I love that there has been a movement across the country to preserve these historic stations.  

Waiting to Check In

Craftsmanship!

Credit Amtrak Website

On the Platform

We woke early in order to arrive at Seattle's King Street Station in time to catch our 7:45 a.m. train to Vancouver.  As you can see from the map on the right, the route takes us along the water almost the entire four hours.  What amazed me was how close to the water we were ... the tracks are literally at water's edge.  We saw many many shore birds, and Jeff spotted a bald eagle at one point on our journey.  Alas, I missed it!  The views of Puget Sound were spectacular, and you almost feel like you are watching a movie as you roll by the wide vistas of life along the shore.

A ferry boat with Mount Hood in the background
Photo Credit

 

The photo above might be my favorite on this page.  I love the interplay of water, clouds, and steel.  This was just before we got into the station.

Photo Credit Amtrak

The Pacific Central Station was completed in 1919 for the Canadian Northern Railway and was designed in the neoclassical revival style by Pratt and Ross.  It is the terminus for Amtrak Cascades and for VIA Rail's "The Canadian."  It was converted to a multi-modal transportation center in 1993 and serves intercity busses in addition to the railroad traffic.  

When we arrived at Vancouver's Pacific Central Railway Station, we had to wait for quite a while because a Canadian train was at the platform we were to go into.  Then, we all had to go through customs.  By the time we got to Pauline's Place (our home for the next 3 days), it was after 1 p.m.  The good news was that she had finished the cleaning, and we were able to move right in!  Pauline is a delightful hostess.  She showed us the apartment - quirks and all - and then walked us to the corner to orient us to the neighborhood.

910 Beach Avenue

The apartment is tiny, but adequate for the four of us.  There is an "open concept" living/dining/kitchen area, two spacious bathrooms, and two tiny bedrooms.  There is also an outdoor balcony, but we haven't had the opportunity to use it as the weather is a bit on the chilly side.  Located at 910 Beach Avenue, it is close to the waterfront and in a lovely part of the city.

After settling in a bit, we decided to take the water taxi over to Granville Island to get some lunch and to do some shopping at the Public Market.  The Hornby Street Dock is located just down the street from our place, and the rainbow colored "aquabus" took us across "False Creek" to Granville Island.  False Creek is a short inlet that separates downtown Vancouver from the rest of the city.  Named by George Henry Richards during his Hydrographic survey of 1856-63, it is one of the four major bodies of water bordering Vancouver (English Bay, Burrard Inlet, and the Fraser River are the other three.).  I also discovered that False Creek was the location of the Expo 86 World's Fair.

We shopped for dinner, buying some lovely pork chops, fingerling potatoes, and asparagus.  We added some apples and onions to the pork chops after browning them on both sides, and covered the pan as the pork chops continued to cook, resulting in a lovely apple sauce.  We baked the potatoes with some onions and olive oil, and steamed the asparagus.  All in all a lovely dinner!  

We subjected Peter and Betty Lou to watching the Yankees lose to Boston by a score of 5-4 before we all decided to retire for the evening.

Saturday, October 6, 2018

We woke to a beautiful, crisp morning and were delighted to see sunshine and blue skies.  Without having a final destination, we decided to take a walk along False Creek to get a sense of the city.  First, however, we took a walk to Breka Bakery for some breakfast treats.  

Breka is a Dutch bakery and was very busy on this Saturday morning.  Peter and Jeff perused the offerings and returned to the table with a lemon square/crumble for Jeff, a cheddar bacon scone for Betty Lou, and a mushroom quiche for Peter.  Everyone was delighted with their choices.

As the photos show, it was a sparkling day once again!  We have been fortunate with the weather on this trip - no real rain to speak of even on our few grey days.  Today the skies were bluer than blue with wisps of clouds to add texture and interest.  Trees have begun to change color.  Vancouver has a highly favorable climate with average temperatures ranging between a low of 37 and a high of 72.  It is Canada's third most rainy city with 161 rainy days per year.  A young group of Spaniards told me that they had been here for a week and today was the first day without rain.  

As we walked along the water, we came upon this piece of art, Khenko by Doug Taylor, which celebrates the return of the blue heron to the waters of False Creek.  It was not windy enough for us to see it "fly", but you can click on this link and see a video showing it in flight.

Jeff took the above photo.  I love the way the architect and/or the homeowner incorporated trees and gardens into the design of this building/apartment.  

These floating houses are amazingly beautiful, and outrageously expensive to purchase, as one of our ferry drivers reported - the last one sold for three million dollars!

     

The architecture in the city is fascinating as well.  We've seen twisting buildings, older buildings, short ones and tall ones!

Wherever we go, Peter loves to make friends with the local pups.  On this morning's walk  we encountered at least four vizslas.  Peter is sitting in front on another art installation called "Red Horizontal" by Giselle Amantea.  "The work…was conceived to function both from a distance and in close proximity. When approaching the artwork from a distance - such as the water or walking along the seawall - the work appears as a thin red horizontal line in contrast to a predominantly vertical architectural environment. In close proximity the viewer can see in a high degree of detail the various residences that compose the photographic aspect of the work. The choice of material, porcelain enamel, is intended to refer to the tradition of ceramic benches and tile work found in both exterior and interior public spaces. The rich red of the porcelain adds a strong element of colour to the predominantly glass, steel and concrete environment." ~ Giselle Amantea

According to the artist, "Red porcelain enamel panels are embedded in the upper portion of concrete benches that run along a portion of the seawall in the North False Creek neighbourhood. In cooperation with area residents, photographs were taken of the interior spaces of the apartments, condominiums, lofts or seniors' housing. These photographs were then arranged into a number of different sequences and appear as transparent halftone images layered on the red panels. A total of 257 photographs appear in the work, 29 of which are repeated. The photographs of the residences were taken in the spring and summer of 2004." 

Conducting a class

Other art that we saw along the way included:

Trans Am Totem by Marcus Bowcott

Giants by OSGEMEOS by Gustavo and Otavio Pandolfo

Marking High Tide, Waiting for Low Tide by Don Vaughan

Brush with Illumination by Buster Simpson
Photo Credit: http://www.bustersimpson.net/brush/

Brush with Illumination by Buster Simpson
Photo Credit: http://www.bustersimpson.net/brush/

Yacht near False Creek Ferry Stop

After walking/strolling for about 3 miles, we all decided that it was time to seek out some lunch, so we boarded the second ferry line, False Creek Ferries, for a trip over to Granville Island.

Once on Granville Island, we headed to the Sandbar Restaurant for lunch.  Jeff and Peter both ordered a Margherita Pizza, Betty Lou ordered a seafood club sandwich without the bread, and I ordered the Kung Pao Prawn Bowl.  Everyone pronounced their food "delicious!"

A Lovely Citrusy Rose Called Narrative

After lunch we headed over to the Public Market where we purchased scallops, chicken, parsnips, and carrots for our dinner.

   

Above Linda selects carrots and parsnips, and then Jeff is holding our rainbow carrots and the parsnips as we returned to the dock to board our Aquabus back to Hornby Docks.

We again subjected our friends to Yankee baseball (the Yankees beat the Sox by a score of 7-2) before we retired once more.  Another wonderful day in Vancouver.

Sunday, October 8, 2018

Our last full day in Vancouver was grey and cloudy with a bit of rain.  We dawdled away the morning.  Jeff was craving another of the yummy lemon/crumble bars he got yesterday at Breka, so he waited until Peter was ready and the two of them set off while Betty Lou and I did some writing.  Sadly, they were out of the lemon bars, so Jeff had to settle for cheesecake for breakfast.  I'm not sure what Peter enjoyed.

We toyed with a number of options for rainy day outings, but finally settled on taking the Aquabus to "The Village" stop (we are stop 1, and the Village is stop 8) to go to Science World.  

The building was originally constructed for Expo 86 when it was known as "Expo Center."  It was also used as a welcome center during to 2010 Olympics.  Today it was mobbed with what seemed like a thousand children all running around and screaming!  We bought tickets for the Imax movie, A Beautiful Planet, which was very enjoyable.  Jeff and I had seen it when we were in Seattle two years ago, but it was well worth seeing again.

It was a rainy morning, and I took quite a tumble getting off the ferry, ending up no worse for the wear -- just a little bit wet.  We set off for a short walk and enjoyed seeing this sculpture along the way.  The bronze sculptures are of the late doctors James Till and Ernest McCulloch who were pioneers in the field of stem cell biology about fifty years ago.  The work was created by Ruth Abernethy, an Ontario sculptor.  

James Till and Ernest McCulloch Bronze Sculptures

Jeff Playing with Light

Light Show

One of the Pair of "Whisper Dishes

 Jeff and I enjoyed whispering to one another across the room by using these Whisper Dishes!  It was amazing how clearly we could hear one another with all the pandemonium of kids surrounding us!

Jeff and I went into the theater (a calm and quiet respite) to see a film called How Earth Made Us: Deep Earth, which was very interesting.  It was all about the forces deep within the earth that continuously shape our landscape and influence the ways in which we live.  The film opened with the gentleman in the orange suit (above) getting dressed to go down into the "Cave of the Crystals" in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico.  He must wear an "ice suit" to protect him from the intense heat, and even with the suit on, he cannot survive for more than 20 minutes because the cave heats up to about 158 degrees fahrenheit!  The main chamber contains gigantic selenite crystals.  According to Wikipedia, "Naica lies on an ancient fault above an underground magma chamber which is approximately 3–5 kilometres (2–3 mi) below the cave. The magma heated the ground water which was saturated with sulfide ions (S²⁻). Cool oxygenated surface water contacted the mineral saturated heated water, but the two did not mix due to the difference in their densities. The oxygen slowly diffused into the heated water and oxidized the sulfides (S²⁻) into sulfates (SO₄²⁻). The hydrated sulfate gypsum crystallized at an extremely slow rate over the course of at least 500,000 years, forming the enormous crystals found today."

We had lunch in the museum and then saw the Imax.  A Beautiful Planet is really well worth seeing.  It is a magnificent portrait of Earth from space with a hauntingly beautiful message that if each one of us on this planet thinks of the planet as a space station and works together, we can make sure that Earth as we know it will be here for our children and our children's children.  I loved it the first time I saw it, and enjoyed it every bit as much the second time.

As we left the science center I noticed these two tree trunk carvings.  Each tree trunk carving depicts a person holding a fish.  In front of these sculptures, I noticed various types of fish sculpted into the curbing.  The words, "Thank You" in two native dialects were also carved there, demonstrating the First Nations' strong belief in honoring and respecting salmon.

Maybe my favorite picture of Betty Lou

The skies seemed a bit brighter as we made our way back to our apartment, but not by a whole lot.  Jeff and I will go back over to the Sandbar to hear some jazz piano tonight.  They are serving Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner.

The Sandbar Restaurant

Beautiful Wine Cellar

Loved the Dragon Sculpture at Night!

Pumpkin Pie for Dessert

Looking Across from Granville Island

Looking Uptown from Granville Island

Aquabus Awaits

And so ends our visit to Vancouver.  This definitely will not be our last visit.  It is a pedestrian and bicycle-friendly city, and we enjoyed every moment of our time here.

Tomorrow ... halfway to the Canadian Rockies and then onward to Jasper!