Vancouver, day 14

A pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses came to the door this morning, and I had the questionable luck to be the only person awake who hadn’t left yet (I should’ve known it’d be something like that – nobody uses the front door, ever). I couldn’t help but get the feeling that the younger guy, the older guy’s son, was a bit embarrassed to be there. Oh well.

They read me a Bible verse, did a bit of talking (damned if I know what they said – or, wait, is it damned if I don’t? – but I wasn’t fully awake yet), and gave me two religious tracts. The tracts are really quite funny, though that’s probably not the reaction they were hoping to provoke. Anyway, they promised to come back again with more tracts so that we could discuss what I’d read.

…I don’t plan on answering the front door again. No, thank you.

In other news, I found the Vancouver Public Library today and got a library card. Technically I was there for an event for work, but I wandered around the event for a while before deciding that I really didn’t want to be there (way too many people), so I hid from my boss and went to borrow books instead. An author I know saw me, so at least I have proof that I showed up. The library, by the way, is enormous – think seven stories high and shaped like the Coliseum.

On my way home I realized that it was only three; why should I go home? I got lunch at a little café (grilled cheese! The only places that sell grilled cheese on Granville Island charge about eight dollars. I refuse to pay that much for some charred bread and cheese… but was very, very happy to find it for considerably less) and headed for Stanley Park. I couldn’t sort out the bus schedule for the first bus I needed, and it was gorgeous and sunny, so I walked halfway there and then caught the appropriate bus.

Stanley Park is beautiful and big. Understand that I am the sort of person who needs three maps and six sets of verbal directions in order to not get lost… so I got lost in short order, but then I found maps (two of them) and sorted out where I was right then and where I wanted to be in twenty minutes. I figured I’d sort out the rest of it (like… where my bus was going to be…) when the time came.

I walked along the outermost path – literally right next to the sea – for a while. The whole loop is about ten kilometers, but it was four o’clock by the time I started and I didn’t think it was the best idea to walk the whole thing. I set my sights on a lighthouse (as seen on map #2!), which was about two kilometers in, and told myself that I had to turn back at four-thirty so that I could catch a bus back into the city.

I made it to the lighthouse and took some pictures (plus, a couple asked me to take their picture with the water and downtown Vancouver as a backdrop, so I asked them to do the same for me). I also saw about fifty high schoolers taking pre-Prom pictures, a wedding party (hideous bridesmaid dresses), and an old cannon. I think the cannon’s supposed to go off at nine every day, but I don’t know whether that means morning or evening – and, considering that Stanley Park is over an hour away by bus, there’s pretty much no chance that I’ll ever be there at either side of nine.

It only took one request for directions and two moments of oh no, I’m lost to find the bus stop on the way back. Go me! Better yet, there was a swingset nearby, so I pretended to be a five-year-old until real five-year-olds ran by and I was swung back into reality. Then I removed my aged self from the swings and went home.