Vancouver B.C. Weekend

After a week away for business and pleasure, I return home to hopefully pick up the brushes again after first getting the household activities caught up.

The work week was spent at the home office in the Seattle area for both business and to attend a workshop.  In my usual routine, I would be driving back to Spokane Friday evening but not this week.  My wife flew over Thursday night and after a half day in the office on Friday, we loaded up and drove to Vancouver B.C. for the weekend.

Why a diversion to Vancouver?  Well, we had tickets to a concert Friday night at Rogers Arena.  Coincidentally, the B.C. Lions held their opening pre-season game at the same time on the same block.  Interesting mix of concert-goers and football fans.  The hot dog stand at Costco was doing a brisk business with a line of hungry grid-iron fans queueing up around the block.  

Vancouver waterfront

Vancouver is quite a beautiful city.  The weather was perfect in the mid-70s F and public transportation is fast and easy.  The last time I was in Vancouver was for the World's Fair in '86.  I don't recall much from that trip nearly 30 years' ago but I do recall the Canada Pavilion which remains today as a waterfront icon.  On Saturday two cruise ships were birthed on either side of the pavilion.

Canada Pavilion

View across harbor to North Vancouver
with float plane coming in for landing

View across harbor towards Vancouver and pavilion 

On the hobby front, Vancouver (or Richmond) maintains a well-stocked Bricks and Mortar hobby store in Imperial Hobbies.  The shop is housed in a strip mall but the quantity of inventory stuffed into that store is amazing.

Now, I have not stepped into an actual hobby store in years but is was good to be able to browse up and down the aisles.  I saw many items of interest especially some fine JR Miniatures buildings and piles of Hotz Mats but the prices gave me a bit of sticker shock.  Yikes!  That store is expensive!  The only purchase I came away with was the latest issue of WSS and it had a sticker price $2 higher than the MSRP.

Even with a drive time of about nine hours, I won't wait 30 years to return.  Next time, we plan to bring the bikes along so that we can ride around the city and take advantage of the expansive Stanley Park.  We saw many transit riders with bikes on both the trains and ferries.  Should be fun!