Back to North America – where it all started.
We arrived in Vancouver early this morning under cloudy skies and with a bit of rain. It was like that all morning, and in the afternoon it cleared up. It was still a bit brisk – high 40s, low 50s with the sun. We were docked at a wonderful location – Canada Place – close to many things in the city.
After breakfast, we went on the Hop On/Hop Off bus to see the main sights in Vancouver. It is a beautiful city with the mountain ranges around it. One of the prettiest parts we have always liked about Vancouver is Stanley Park. Our bus trip took us through part of it. The tulips were in full bloom and all the flowers made a colorful picture. 
While you can’t see the colorful flowers here, the greens in the park were just as pretty!
We saw interesting buildings as well. One of their newest ones was the library that had several bids on it by architects. We think the final piece was a great choice:
This was taken from the bus. It makes you think you might be reading in Rome!
We stopped off in China Town. Vancouver has the 2nd largest China Town on the west coast (after San Francisco.) We have enjoyed all the China Towns (and the real China!) we visited on this trip, so we wanted to end with one. We found some wonderful things here for our home – an unexpected surprise. And, we had a little bit of room left in one of our boxes.
We also walked around the park there called Sun Yat-Sen Park. It was beautiful, and we wished we had more time to see more of it.
There was a larger Pagoda across the lake and lots of little paths to walk on.
While we were there, we heard this beautiful ringing sound. A lady outside the gift shop had a metal bowl in her hand and was rubbing a wooden stick around it. The sound grew louder and louder. We were intrigued, so went to the gift shop to inquire about it. Well, it’s called a “singing bowl” and it is from Tibet. Its sound is to set the mood for meditation. It is an amalgam of 7 metals. Each bowl creates a slightly different sound. Doug could “play” it very well, so we bought one – of course!
We had to walk back towards the ship since we had to be on board by 4:30 and it was now late afternoon. As we headed back we walked through a part of town known as Gastown. On the street in this town is the one and only steam clock in the world.
You can see the steam coming out from the top of the clock. It “sounds” every 15 minutes. At 3:30 it sounded like the Westminster chime – like a pipe organ. Very cool!
We stopped by another store where we saw many rock statues the Inuit Indians made to signal their tribes. It became the symbol for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.
Back at the ship, we dropped off our stuff in our cabin and then went out to watch our final sail away. We visited with people we had met and took pictures of the city as we sailed from it.
On the left you can see the space needle in the background.
We went under the Lion’s Bridge on our way out to head toward Seattle. It looked similar to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
We had our last dinner in the dining room – but without Charlie and Barb who had gotten off earlier today. We missed them! Yuyun gave me some chopsticks as we left (he always remembered I liked to use them with various Chinese dishes we had!). The big surprise was when Komang asked if we would meet him at 8 p.m. in the Exploration Lounge. There he presented us a with a picture he had made – and it was for us if we wanted it. He worked on it in his spare time (whenever that would be!) starting it in Antarctica and finished it within the last few days before Vancouver. It was all done in pencil and was a story about the Bali gods (where he came from) and how one tried to eat the moon, but then his head was chopped off so he could never have it inside of him.
It is an amazing drawing. Komang is quite an artist – and we didn’t know it. It was truly a gift from his heart, and we will treasure it always.
We still had some packing to do and paperwork for our Customs declaration the following morning. We also had to wait up for the final DVD of our cruise until it was finished. We learned a good lesson – write down on every receipt what it was you purchased and how much it was in USA dollars. It took us way too many hours to do this.
We had the last chocolate on our pillow in Cabin 2642.
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