Yesterday Hayley and I bused and trained out to a suburb to a large shopping mall and had a good look around in the relatively calm surroundings of a shopping mall. Good to have a look around without the hassle of traffic and lots of people. Went back into town to a hotel liquidation place to look at bed linen etc.
Last night we went to Kooza the Cirque du Soleil show. It was incredible. The show was action-packed and edge-of-your-seat acrobatics. Some times I wasn’t sure I could watch.
This is the outside of the tent and foyer area.
When we emerged from the show, in typical Vancouver fashion it was HOSING down, so much rain. Of course we didn’t take an umbrella and the puffer jacket was not waterproof!!. Couldn’t do much but laugh about it. We ran a couple of blocks to some shelter and ordered a taxi, it took a while, but we eventually got home wet and dishevelled.
Today we hired a car, Pat was so excited to be driving. Together with Hayley and Pat’s flatmate, a lovely little Irish girl called Fiona, we heading up into the mountains. First stop was the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park a totally amazing park that has treetop walks and a huge suspension bridge, and catilevered cliff walk. We were really blown away by the whole way it was constructed, very sturdy, done tastefully and was totally beautiful.
After that we headed up to Grouse Mountain. It is a ski-field, but has lots going on during the summer as well. The gondola made ours look like dinky toys. We had lunch there and wandered around, it was -1 degrees as they obviously had snow at the time last night when we were getting the torrential rain! We saw one of the two bears there and the wolf. The bear came out especially to see us and headed straight back in, we were so lucky that he chose that time to come out for a look. It looks like a fun winter mountain and so close to the city is pretty cool, they have night skiing here till around 11pm. Hayley and Pat can’t wait to get started with the season.
We then drove to deep cove, this little village reminded us especially of Akaroa and little bit like Picton. 
Headed home to go out to dinner to the ‘Dine in the Dark’ restaurant. A restaurant where you arrive, sit outside, choose your meal options and drinks. I chose ‘surprise me’ for entree, main and dessert. To get into the restaurant you stepped inside the door to a very small foyer that had a dull red light, your blind waiter asked you to form a train and he guided us to our tables. Oh my goodness!! it was a surreal experience, um it was totally dark, I mean you could not see a thing. I could totally understand if someone had a panic attack in there, we found it hilariously funny (nervous hysteria) it was a fun experience and made us very appreciation of having our sight. I don’t totally know what my meal was but I think it was some kind of mediterranean entree, like brushetta, the main was a rissotto with a meaty kind of fish and some veges and the dessert was a kind of cheesecake tart.
An action packed day. Packing my bag now for a couple of days on Vancouver Island.