Officially off duty

Too late to do anything about it I discovered that the employed person was not actually off duty yesterday. It turns out that her "conference" was still running. She says that the last of various "break-out sessions" which is relevant to her work was held on Monday making her free to sight see.

OK. It's a good story and even if not . . . well, why would you ruin a good story just for . . .

It had rained over night giving us wet streets and paths and 7C when we left the hotel today. A bicycle repeat didn't seem like a good idea so we went in search of old buildings in downtown Vancouver. Vancouver is a setting which can only be described as spectacularly scenic but the downtown and the suburban areas visible to downtown though across the bays and inlets are overrun with late 20th century glass walled towers. After a few days of looking at the buildings and comparing them to the nearby water and mountains we have both come around to the opinion that the architecture of modern Vancouver is H-I-D-E-O-U-S.

So we were looking for old buildings.

She hadn't actually noticed the Marine Building before and I like it a lot so we went there for additional examination. Here's another view of the elevator lobby with a better view of the ornate floor.We noticed that there was a mezzanine overlooking the lobby so we boarded one of the elevators, and not finding a button for mezzanine, pushed 2. Here's where we found ourselves:I wasn't completely satisfied with the way the photo of the entrance came out the other day so we stopped and got a couple of detail photos. this one is the archway over the main entrance door.There are panels on the pillars depicting historical events. I don't know if the detail is very visible on this one but that panel commemorates the SS Empress of Japan, the figurehead of which was in one of yesterday's photos.We found ourselves drawn to anything with a corroded green copper roof. This one turns out to be just a pretty fancy hotel but there in front of it is THE major church of downtown Vancouver, the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral.I have often in the past included photos of churches so we went inside to see what this one looked like. And it is a quite attractive interior, nice old wooden construction, nice stained glass, a few steps down from Parisian cathedrals but a nice enough old church building.Vancouver claims to have the third largest Chinatown in North America (our guess is San Francisco and Los Angeles). Neither of us had been down there previously and we were close enough to make it part of today's stroll so we headed off in that direction.

This is called the Millenium Gate and it is the entryway to Vancouver's Chinatown.A Chinese settlement had developed in this area even before Vancouver was incorporated as a city. The area was later named Shanghai Alley.

Here on historic Shanghai Alley is a Han Dynasty bell replica. The bell was gift to Vancouver from its sister city of Guangzhou.The bell is a replica of one unearthed in Guangzhou in 1983 during excavation for a major new hotel. The original is over 2,000 years old and has quite an interesting history. It was buried in a king's burial tomb which was discovered more than 20 meters below the modern city streets.

The other major Chinatown tourist attraction here is the Doctor Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. The book says it is the only Ming Dynasty style Chinese garden built outside of China in 400 years.

We are all aware that gardens are not at their peak at this time of year but we still managed to get a nice photo of my fellow traveler.That's pretty likely to be it although never say never, we don't actually leave town until tomorrow.