The last part first

BTW, "The First Part Last" is a compelling novel by Angela Johnson, but that's neither here nor there to me telling you about Vancouver.  I didn't plan ahead when I popped up these postings, so they are in reverse order.  I really don't think it matters.

Our last day in Vancouver was a Thursday.  It was really sunny and finally hit 26 degrees!  Now that is the normal temperature for the end of July and we had not seen it.  On that last day, I finally got my Tim Horton's coffee.  I swear the city is inundated with Starbucks and non-commercial little coffee shops, but I found my Tim's.

We took a walking architectural tour of Chinatown mostly because I didn't want to walk that area alone.  Chinatown is very poor and there are a lot of homeless people, more so than what you see in New York.  So safety in numbers with a guide.  I think I took some fun pictures:

Vancouver is a very Asian city. At the mall in Burnaby I'd guess that 70-80 % of the people shopping and working there were of Asian decent.  I thought that was pretty cool.  I can't stand the term minority, never have liked it, for it seems quite derogatory as if to note something lesser.  However, in this instance I'll say, I was in the minority in Burnaby.  Vancouver was more balanced demographically, probably more like San Francisco.  These are west coast cities that are going to have migration from the nations closest to them (no, I don't mean the US...silly)!  I was also looking at Vancouver demographics and read that same-sex marriage was also legal there.

Which makes a nice segue into the next part of the journey where we walked and walked and walked and finally came down Davie St. which is the Vancouver version of the Castro in San Fran.

I'll let the pictures do the rest of this justice!

One of the beaches at False Creek

Dog friendly.  

I read that urban planners deliberately encouraged the high rise to prevent urban sprawl.

Burrard Bridge, one of many in the area.

I called this the wavy building!

Inukshuk

Koi, be glad I didn't upload all 10 shots I took of these!  I am a Pisces!

Not my favorite team, but HOCKEY!

On the last day as we left we visited Zero Ave.  This is the border with the US.  There is no fence, no guard, no camera....just this marker!

Beyond the marker is the US.

In the front of the marker it says Canada, in the back, United States.

On the left is the US and on the right Canada.  Do you think anyone minds if people cross the street to be neighborly? There are literally houses across the street from one another, the exception being this is a Canadian street and the US property has a different street so it's the back yard that is on Zero Ave.