Vancouver

Vancouver is an attractive and clean city with plenty of restaurants, shopping venues, and walkways.  The majority of the multi-storey buildings are relatively modern.  We took a walk this morning along the waterfront which was very pleasant and walker-friendly, apart from the many dogs being taken by their owners for ablutions along the same paths.

Many years ago a Japanese man wanted to commence a business selling Japanese food from street stalls.  At that time it was only permitted to sell hot dogs or ice cream in this way, so the ingenious owner invented his specialty - Japadogs which are now famous and very much in demand (see photos of a stall and menu below)

We passed the very old Christ Church Cathedral which narrowly survived demolition.  There were plans to build a multi-storey building on the site and reconstruct the church in the basement!

This afternoon we joined an excellent guided tour with 12 participants plus a first class guide - called "Vancouver guilty pleasures gourmet tour".  We had booked this tour in Australia before departing.  It  involved visits to 5 different establishments which were some of the best which Vancouver has to offer.  There were tastings at each.  The food included prawn and pork dumpling, sticky rice with pork and scallop wrapped in lotus leaf, cheeses, chocolates, miniature pastries, Italian meatballs with roquette, cheese and prosciutto, slow roasted pulled pork sandwich, and the best gelato on earth!  Needless to say we do not require an evening meal.  We would recommend this foodie walking tour to anyone visiting Vancouver.  Some members of the group had undertaken such tours in other cities and spoke highly of them as a means to get to know the city and sample its food.  The participants were all English speaking, all visitors, and from many different countries - Ireland, South Africa, USA, and Australia.

Downtown Vancouver on the water.

A chocolate smorgasbord at the gourmet grocery store

A selection from the very large range of specialist cheeses at the speciality grocery store

A Japadog street vendor's corner stall

Japadog menu

Spoilt dogs and their owners

D 

Historical Church now World Heritage

Seaplanes taking tourists for flights over the harbour, ski slopes in background