Vancouver Trip - Day 2

It's amazing how much difference a full night of sleep can make.

It is also pretty amazing just how many coffee shops a big city really needs. Yesterday morning at Cafe Artigiano, we were facing the outside window, and noticed that there was a coffee shop on all 4 corners of that intersection.

We spent most of the morning doing some light shopping, and further exploring the city. There was a very nice dog park along the water that we wished we could bring Nala to. It is unfortunate that we don't have any kind of off-leash dog park in Evansville. Nala could use some practice being loose in public.

We continued walking along the water, and made it about 1/4th of the way around Stanley Park before we decided to return. A bike or rollerblades would make that trek much nicer. We may rent some and explore the park a bit deeper. Hopefully the weather gets a bit nicer before we have to leave.

The plan for today was to go to the Capilano Suspension Bridge, but we'll see how the weather treats us this afternoon. It is very gloomy and has been raining a bit. The weather is actually supposed to stay pretty gloomy until we leave, but we definitely don't want it to be raining when we go to Capilano.

During our walks around the city, we were constantly keeping an eye out for one of the "smoke-friendly bars" that are around the city. We must have walked 6-7 miles without finding what we were looking for. On top of that, our connection did not follow through. We were a bit bummed out by the evening. Luckily, I decided to get on the internet and look up the location of the New Amsterdam Cafe. We were only 6 freaking blocks away from it! And our walks through the city left us less than 1 block away multiple times without ever seeing it!

The NA Cafe is pretty much exactly what you would expect it to be. A pot bar. About 20-30 people sitting around and constantly rolling/smoking joints. Twice on the way to the bar, we heard "need some bud?" from some very sketchy looking characters, and we decided not to buy anything on the street. We were lucky enough to meet a couple college kids at the Cafe who were leaving tomorrow morning, and had more than they needed. They invited us to join them for a little while, and sold us what they had left over. Lucky us. The whole experience was very new and exciting.

We left the Cafe at about 10pm fried out of our minds. A few more homeless-looking guys asked us if we needed some bud, and one definitely-homeless guy said, "Got any bud? I got a lighter!!"

Back at the hotel, we finally indulged in the Jose Quervo we had bought the night before. It did not take long to fall asleep that night.