Wet, Grey Ride to Vancouver

If I were an artist - and I’m not - and I had to paint the colours of today’s ride, I’d only need black, white and maybe a bit of grey.

It was time for another servicing so today I rode into Vancouver. I take my Vespa in every 2000 km or about 4 months to get an oil change and to be checked over. It’s certainly more often than suggested but I l only really want to ride my scooter, not tinker with it, so this has worked well for me.

My youngest daughter is in Japan - I head there on Thursday - so she has my camera. The photos I have posted today were taken with my video camera so I apologize for the lack of quality.



I meant to take some photos on the way but the rain, which was not bad when I was still, completely soaked me while riding. Luckily I have good gloves, waterproof clothes, and I was even wearing my gortex overbooties!


After dropping off the Vespa, I headed into Kitsilano - a trendy section of Vancouver where Vespa Vancouver is located. There’s lots of good restaurants., cool stores and loads of interesting people.


I stopped at Kits Coffee for an early lunch (panini) and a latté while I read a couple guidebooks on Japan. Between the library and the Book Warehouse, I’ve accumulated a number of books about Tokyo - you’d think I hadn’t lived there before - sheesh!


I saw this interesting mutant bicycle - looks like some sort of Harley - Peugeot hybrid. It caused a few people to stop and look.

While talking to my favourite Vespa dealer, Bob, I found out that, much to my surprise, Vespa Vancouver was not rebranding but, in fact, now had a competitor. A couple weeks ago, I was at the Green Living Show in Vancouver and saw a display for Vespa Metro. I assumed that this was a new name for the old store, especially since I vaguely recognized one of the people at the display.


No, Vespa Inc. has decided to open another Vespa retailer in Vancouver, near (but not in) the area known as Little Italy (Vespa Metro is pictured above). Bob is not particularly happy as people think that the two stores are owned by the same people. He’s also a bit worried about a price war which could be good for the consumer if prices drop and could be bad for the consumer if they both go broke. For the time being, I’m very happy with Bob and the service at Vespa Vancouver so I’ll stick with them.


Vespa Metro does have a cool mural in progress, though.


I left with my serviced Vespa and headed home, stopping at Coquitlam Centre to pick up some Chinese groceries at T and T market. Lo and behold, when I left the mall, the sun was almost breaking through the clouds. It was definitely worth a photo.

So now, I am getting ready for my upcoming trip to Tokyo. I will hopefully be reunited with my still camera (or might even get another one in Tokyo) and have some interesting photos for this blog. Until then, sayonara!

Tour of Vancouver

We’ve had the good fortune of having visitors from Scotland over the past couple of weeks. I went on a teacher exchange about six years ago and my family got to know a good number of different people in the village where we lived (Ardaneaskan) as well as the town that was up the road (Lochcarron). Our visitors were good friends with my whole family and it was wonderful to show them around town.

Over the past couple of weeks, we have done some touring around Vancouver. I thought I’d share some places that I have particularly enjoyed visiting lately.

First up is the Vancouver Aquarium. It is in Stanley Park, a huge park area attached to the downtown area of Vancouver. It’s a 1000 acres and is actually a bit bigger than Central Park in New York.



There was once a zoo but there was public pressure to get out of the zoo business and just concentrate on aquatic creatures. There are some seals, otters, whales, etc, but they tend to be rescue animals rather than animals captured explicitly for the aquarium. There are shows but these tend to focus on the animals’ natural abilities rather than tricks.

There are also a huge variety of different tanks, an amazon area complete with a zillion butterflies, and lots of interactive displays for the kiddies.



Next is the Vancouver Art Gallery. We saw an exhibit called Monet to Dali. This is a great cross section of artists on loan from the Cleveland Museum of Art. I never realized that Cleveland had such an awesome collection of paintings.




Outside the gallery, which is located in the old courthouse, there was a film crew filming a large group on the steps leading to the front. The gallery often is used in movies and TV shows for - you guessed it - a courthouse.




The last interesting thing was a countdown clock beside the gallery. The Winter Olympics will be held in 2010 in Vancouver. Reaction to this upcoming event ranges from ecstatic excitement about what is going to happen in three short years to upset grumblings as the costs rise and construction takes over the city.



The third place that the females in my family especially like is Robson Street. It is a shopper’s paradise - several blocks of different stores, ranging from touristy and tacky to music to high fashion to great restaurants.



Of course, I like to spend my time wandering around and people watching. I really don’t like the shopping part but I do like looking at the different kinds of people - different nationalities, rich and poor, young and old.



I also like the unusual things that happen to make their way to Robson. In one block there were two unusual cars - one advertising a restaurant and the other - well, it looked interesting!



Inside one of the stores, there was this old Harley - looks like a heavy duty bicycle with a motor - obviously a precursor to the modern motorcycle.



The final stop for this tour of Vancouver is Little Italy on Commercial Drive. This is the kind of place where you’ll find scooterists getting together before a ride. I also like the sense of humour for some of the signs in the area.



We had a great lunch at an Italian restaurant. I was particularly struck by the pizza oven - not only how it looked, but also how well it worked. I love true italian style pizza.



After a great meal, we headed back home - well, actually, it took a couple of days to see these attractions but what the heck. I guess there are a lot of things to see in Vancouver....