Another wonderful day in the “Manhattan with Mountains” as it has been described. We are staying in West Vancouver which means that we are very close to a ferry stop to Granville Island. Granville is a man made Island that you can get to by tugboat… travelling to an island by tugboat was not a sentence I thought that I’d be writing but there you go.

This excursion was Steve initiated so you would not be surprised to hear my great pleasure in getting off our little tugboat to be surrounded by gorgeous shops and coffee places. So lots of opportunities to invest wisely😜.

As well as being able to purchase artwork by First Nations people you can also purchase cement… uh huh yep cement. The team at Ocean Concrete are one of the oldest tenants on the Island and have a vision of being sustainably responsible. Why so much about this company ? Well get a load of their colourful concrete silos, and they also have a strawberry cement mixer..

A lovely although a little drizzly morning spent sipping coffee, eating crepes (yum), listening to buskers and of course helping the broader economy with a little spending.

What to next.. we decided to head to Capilano River Regional Park to hear more about the First Nations as well as walk across the Capilano suspension bridge. Our bus driver out to North Vancouver had a mic and certainly used it to provide us with some interesting facts about Vancouver (which I loved).

Did you know that when the Winter Olympics in 2010 were held here there had been no snowfall that year and so helicopters were used to airlift snow to Cypress Hill where the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events were being held. The bus driver could not recall another season like this either before or after 2010..

He also said that Vancouver was the third biggest movie production centre in North America… and that may in fact be true…see photo below🥂.

Onto Capilano where the views were stunning and the story of the building of the Bridge (s) were amazing. Those who know me will know that I am not fond of heights and certainly not swinging bridges. However I did finally face my fears and make my way across, this had nothing to do with me being shamed into doing so having watched four generations of the same family laughingly cross not a care in the world..yep great grandma to toddler. So I pulled myself together and ever so bravely (not) walked the 140 metre long bridge that swings 70 metres above the river.

Another great day finishing it off with a Peroni and pizza as you do.