We woke to a lot of rain again, but the forecast claimed it would be gone by 1pm or so, so we gamely set out for Gastown/Chinatown on our Gemini-designed walking tour.
First stop: brunch at Mead & Bread, a well known Vancouver sandwich eatery.
We got there around noon and there weren't many people around so they had our order ready very quickly. It was kind of interesting watching them make the sandwiches right in front of you.
One porchetta and one meatball. Side of mustard for both. Verdict? Very very good. The porchetta averages a 3.75 and the meatball averaged a 4.0, but to establish how well regarded these were, neither sandwich got a score lower than 3.5 from any of the judges.
Very conveniently, a purebread branch was just next door so we were able to sample a few more bars. Here's the cookies & cream bread: just 3 stars. This might be my least favorite of all the Purebread offerings between today and yesterday. Takeaway: get brownies/bars, not sweet cakes/breads.
R revisited the banana chocolate brownie. Just as solid today as yesterday. 4.25.
I went out of my standards and got the caramel chocolate bar on the advice of the worker. 3.75 stars.
Baba went for the sour cherry cheesecake bar. 3.75 stars.
After this we headed towards the heart of Chinatown. Here's the Millennium Gate (seems like a must have in every Chinatown, no?) erected in 2002 in celebration of the new millennium.
The main tourist site here was the historic Jack Chow Insurance Building (now turned into a kitschy animatronic Giant Panda tourist attraction), which has the honor of being the skinniest building in the world (what you see below is it's entire width, a little under 5 feet).
The original building was 30 feet wide, but the government exercised its taking powers to expropriate 24 of the 30 feet, leaving him with only 6 to use. Chang Tow (land owner) refused to just abandon the last 6 feet and instead built a full commercial building, including a larger basement that went out into the street more (notice the "windows" in the street in front of the store to let in natural light for the basement).
I had planned to stop at the Sun Yat Sen classical Chinese garden...but it was closed! 😠There really wasn't much else we wanted to see in Chinatown so we quickly moved on over to Gastown. Chinatown...is not exactly the nicest part of Vancouver, in terms of homeless population, drug use, general grime...the twins were not eager to longer.
Over in neighboring Gastown, we made our next culinary stop: Soft Peaks organic soft serve ice cream.
We got classic chocolate and milk tea with pearls. The mix of all three together in one bite was the clear winner. I would give that 4 stars.
The main attraction for Gastown was the steam clock, which was constructed in the 1970s seemingly as a tourist attraction. It was kind of interesting to watch the system of pulleys and weights that help it run.
I kind of wanted to wait for the "show" at the top of the hour but I was overruled by the rest of the family who were eager to get back to the hotel pool. We did catch the quarter hour mini-show so got a sense of what it would be like. Interesting...but not mind blowing.
The walk back took us next to Canada Place and the cruise port. It was a little sad seeing the Princess ship docker next to the water - wish we were about to board a cruise! The view from the pier was quite lovely too.
Back on the city walk, we passed by this building with a public art display wrapped around its middle bearing the following message: "lying on top of a building…the clouds looked no nearer than when i was lying on the street." I choose to interpret that as commentary about wealth and prestige...they don't really matter in the greater scheme of things.
We also passed this beautiful floral display celebrating Pride.
I forced everyone to take a slight detour over to the Pendulum Gallery in the HSBC building. Sadly the huge swinging pendulum was stationary today because they were installing some new exhibits...but you couldn't tell since it's a still photo anyhow. 😆
I wasn't keen to go to the pool myself so I suggested we do one more detour over to the local supermarket to grab some Canadian gifts/snacks for friends. We ended up with quite the haul. I suspect some of these presents for "friends" will somehow end up being consumed by our own household...
And with a couple hours to spare before dinner, we headed down to check out the pool. Though the pool was indoors, it had this lovely little outdoor terrace area with loungers and trees. I really enjoyed just lying there for an hour or so while the others hit the hot tub.
Tonight, we were meeting my friend S (and her 1 year old daughter) at Dynasty Seafood for a live Alaska king crab dinner.
It was really alive and moving still. I noticed it had some black marks on the shell which would make it easy for us to confirm that it was in fact the same crab being served. 😆
L was brave enough to actually hold the live crab! Check out that size! And this was a SMALL specimen at only 5.8 pounds. They easily get up to 12!
We got the crab three ways: first, steamed legs. Very tender, sweet, fresh -- 4 stars. Made me realize how salty the frozen ones become probably from being packed with salt for preservation!
The second course was battered and stir fried with ginger and scallion. There were 3 other recommended preparations that were allegedly more popular than this one (chili, too spicy for the kids, cilantro, R is anti-cilantro, and salty egg yolk, which S and I love but my family sadly does not). For being only fourth on the recommendation list, I still found this quite tasty! It was probably my favorite course - 4.5 stars. The big difference for me in terms of the crab meat compared to Dungeness is that it is sweeter and more tender, flaky almost, but not in the bad mushy, I keep repeating myself, but it was a fresher texture.
And finally, the main course of crab fried rice. Kids said this was their favorite. I'll give it a 4.25 because I found it a smidge on the bland side (which I easily compensated for by adding some pea shoots and green onions from the other dishes).
Dinner was definitely pricey but for me worth it from a "seeing what all the hoopla about live king crab is about" perspective. Would I do it again? Probably not. The difference in taste compared to a rock crab or Dungeness was real but not enough to make up for the price difference. Which makes me all the more grateful to S for being willing to drive the 50 minutes in rush hour to join us! And with a one year old too!
When we got back to the hotel, it was only 7:30 -- too early to just turn in for the night, so Baba and I headed out in search of a sunset viewing point. We first tried Parker Rooftop...drinks were fine, but the view wasn't amazing (Gemini recommendation fail!).
We could see the sky starting to turn pretty so we slammed the drinks and did a speed walk down to Sunset Beach. Got there just in time as the show was getting good. They had these big logs perched on the beach that were perfect for sunset viewing.
Lots of folks were out there creating their perfect Instagram shots. It was a more interesting scene than other sunsets because of the number of boats and paddleboarders and hydrofoilers.
Had to throw in one photo utilizing my newfound vertical panorama skills.
Eventually the colors started fading and the air started turning nippy so we turned around to walk back to the hotel. I was again grateful for how centrally located it was -- maybe not 5 min to much besides shopping but at a 20 min walking radius basically we could hit everything in downtown Vancouver. One last parking nighttime shot. This is the futuristic Butterfly Tower rising out of the historic First Baptist Church.
And that's the end of today. Tomorrow is our last full day in Vancouver! ðŸ˜
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