On the Road-Vancouver

ONTHEROAD-VANCOUVER August 25

Drink in British Columbia
They drink and produce a lot of beer here. There is a chain here called Fogg 'n Suds which has beers aver 100 beers from all over the world. The Fogg is for Phineas Fogg from around the World in 80 days and the Suds is of course beer.

In Iced Teas there is Shaken Iced Tea- a good tea fruit blend from a big coffee chain called BLENZ. In Chinatown there were many signs for Bubble Tea which is an Iced Tea with round fruity candies in the bottom of your glass.

GRANVILLE ISLAND
We took a bus ato get here but it doesn't seem to require a bridge to get there. There is a large portion of False Creek around Granville and many small water taxis to take passengers across the water to parts of the city on the other side of the water. The highlight of GI is the Public Market which seems like an indoor daily farmer's market at which each booth has wonderful products--the food booths we sampled. I got a fabulous scone which had a hint of cheese and salt and no sugar. In the whole state of California I have not found an unsugared scone.

David and I declined to take a ferry in favor of walking along a paved path that follows the creek and atook us into Chinatown.
CHINATOWN
First we visited the Dr. Sun-Yet sun Garden. This is a small type Ming Garden and bult to give a sense of larger space and containing elements of water, Earth, Heaven,nature. There is Ying and Yang all over the place so that opposites which are really complementary can be shone. This is seen in male and female foliage, round stones and skinny rectangular stones, live bamboo and mineral rocks against the bamboo that have an opposite texture from the bamboo. In their temple room they have a view of an Evergreen to symbolize strength and long-life, a bamboo to symbolize flexibility, and a snow cherry (this is a tree that blooms in the China before the snow is gone) to symbolize rebirth.

For lunch we were directed to the Jade Dynasty restauraant for freshly prepared Dim Sum. They were not kidding. You ordered from a menu and then they cooked it and brought it out to you right from the oven in a steamer. You could taste the freshness.

GASTOWN
This was the in place in Vancouver in mid 19th century. It gets its name from a developer here who told long-winded stories. The Original Spahetti Factory is located here and there is old trolley car in the middle of the restaurant that you chose to sit in.

VANCOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY
David wanted me to get to see the library which is very close to our hotel. It is a block long and 7 stories high. It houses 1.3 million tomes/resources. Even with this gigantic building some collections must be kept on shelves that have no space between one set of bookcases and the next. One must press a button to move the shelves apart and get to the shelves that you need. While some libraries are beginning to have coffee bars in them, this place has a full block long row of little snack stores across from the door where one actually enters to get to the books. Originally, I thought that patrons could eat snacks in parts of the library but a VPL librarian tells me that you cannot eat in the library. When you go through the gates upon entering the book area, they give you shopping baskets like the hand-held kind that you get in food markets. The catalog has my mother's books. They allow non-members to use the Internet for an hour.