A view of the spring leaves in Stanley Park

This morning Kent spent working on his emails from the past several days while Mark ventured out on a walk through the local neighborhood. The city streets are filled with beautiful spring blossoms everywhere. Most of the streets are tree lined and most every building has lush landscaped beds of flowers out front. Many of the trees have gorgeous white flowers while the beds are filled with azaleas, rhododendron bushes, hydrangeas, tulips, irises and a variety of other local blooming plants.

This winter included plenty of severe weather causing a barge to wash ashore in a king tide not far from our hotel. After attempting to find a way to move the barge it was decided that the barge would need to be cut up and scrapped for its metal. The demolition of the barge is scheduled to begin next week.

In the afternoon friends Ken and Paul came to our hotel and we walked along the sea wall into Stanley Park catching up. After our walk we stopped into the Sylvia Hotel Restaurant for wine, salads and dessert. It was so good to see them after so many years and to hear about their retirement, Mahjong playing, lunches at the local senior center, travel experiences and more.

In the late afternoon we wound our way to a dear friend who luckily happens to be a doctor. Dr. Steve’s services were needed for our medically monitored Covid-19 test prior to boarding our Holland America ship the following day. Steve lives just a few blocks from the Sylvia Hotel so it was a short ten-minute walk to his home. He is recently retired and has his gorgeous penthouse condo on the market, hoping to sell it. Getting the business out of hand first we completed out Covid-19 tests and we were both negative. That was a relief.

We then enjoyed drinks on a large terrace overlooking the city, Stanley Park and the English Bay. The weather was perfect with sunshine and temperatures that had reached nearly 70 degrees. Kent and Dr. Steve met in 1981 and so there were a lot of years, people and stories to get caught up on.

After drinks we took a short walk over to Denman Street where we dined at a Spanish tapas restaurant called Espana. There we enjoyed more drinks, a variety of tapas, a large skillet of paella and churros for dessert with warm chocolate sauce for dipping. The food was very nice but more important was our time visiting with Steve. We hope to be able to see him again soon before too many years pass us by.

Happy Birthday to my father David on this day as well as a Happy Anniversary to my big brother Dennis and his wife Susan.

After a lovely breakfast at our hotel overlooking English Bay, we headed out on the sea wall into Stanley Park for a 2.5-mile round trip walk. The weather has been spectacular with plenty of sunshine and temperatures up to about 65 degrees. It has been raining here for weeks but we brought some San Diego sunshine with us.

This morning our friend Bryan took us out to the University of British Columbia (UBC) to visit the museum of Anthropology. The Museum of Anthropology is a collection of world arts with a special emphasis on the First Nations peoples and other cultural communities of British Columbia. The museum was designed by architect Arthur Erickson with cedar post and beam construction found in traditional Northwest Coast Aboriginal Villages.  Built on a steep promontory overlooking the ocean, a great hall includes massive First Nations sculptures. Unfortunately, this large main gallery was undergoing seismic retrofit and was temporarily closed. Many smaller galleries include exhibits from First Nations communities of Pacific Islanders, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. The museum is a public research and teaching facility with one of the most advanced and comprehensive research infrastructures of any museum in North America. Included are state-of-the-art conservation and research laboratories, audio visual and oral history studios, library and archives, as well as modern storage facilities. This modern facility allows works to be preserved, researched and interpreted.

The collections at the museum not only consisted of Canadian First Nation artifacts but there are other collections from many cultures around the world. On the day we visited, there was a temporary exhibit of Latin art with a very diverse look at their people and culture.

After our museum visit we met up with friend Ken Kwong for a wonderful dim sum lunch at a restaurant called the Golden Ocean Seafood. We sat at a large round table with a lazy Susan and the servers brought baskets and dishes of assorted food.  Most dishes consisted of four pieces of items like stuffed rice balls, fried taro root balls, meat balls, and desert pastries. Everything was very tasty and we enjoyed catching up with Ken.

After lunch, Ken took us on a driving tour in his Mercedes convertible.  We visited various parts of the city and enjoyed driving through the UBC campus.

For dinner we took a short walk to a quick serve Greek restaurant for a light bite to eat. As this weekend is a long weekend for Victoria Day here in Canada it was very busy on the streets. The streets were busy with cars all afternoon and the streets were filled with people in the evening.