Vancouver: Day Two
On the second day, Monday, we decided to rent a car and see a few more sites that were not easily accessible via Vancouver’s public transportation. We made the reservation online the night before for a Toyota Camry Hybrid. What did we end up getting? A 2010 Ford Mustang GT convertible…sorry Kelli. The day started out very overcast, so Budget was really slashing prices on the convertibles. It cost us a little less than $15 more. I was still sticking with the hybrid, but they then mentioned that the Mustang was ready to go, but the Camry was getting cleaned up and would be a little bit of a wait…I give the rep props for being a grade A salesman. I also got the portable navigation unit for $12, but that was actually my idea from the beginning.
Nothing like getting in a car you have never driven and pulling out into downtown Vancouver Monday morning traffic! I suppose I did okay. The kicker is all of the pedestrians. We ended up making 3 rights turn to equivalate 1 left turn several times throughout the day.
Our first stop was the Capilano Suspension Bridge. It was only about a 15 minute drive from downtown. On there way there we crossed over the Lions Gate Bridge (pictured above).
I guess it worked out that we rented a car from Budget because they gave us a free admission ticket for the Capilano Suspension Bridge. This was nice since tickets were $30 each! We hung out there for a couple of hours. It wasn’t too crowded being a Monday morning I suppose.
Next we hopped back in the car and drove on up to Grouse Mountain, which was only a few more miles up the road. You park at the base, then ride a lift about half a mile up. While we were paying for parking, we heard the announcement that the next lift up was leaving in 5 minutes…so ran on up and paid the $36 each for admission. The warned us before paying that we wouldn’t be able to see much due to the weather. The day before was nice! We decided to check it out anyways. On the 8 minute ride up the mountain, I realized that I forgot my jacket. There was about a 20 degree difference between the 70ish temperature at the base and the top of the lift. They were not kidding about not seeing much either. We stayed up Grouse Mountain for a couple of hours before I was getting pretty chilly.
After Grouse, we drove down Highway 99 a few miles before seeing a “scenic route” exit. So I took that which ended up heading up a mountain which is next to Grouse. About half way up we stopped at a scenic overlook. We continued up until it road dead ended. There was quite a bit of construction going on preparing for the 2010 Olympics. We then headed back down. It’s a little weird to go from 50 degrees and drizzle to 70 and sunny in just a few minutes. We stopped at the scenic overlook again on the way down, but this time it was so I could pop the top on the convertible. It was about 2 PM at this point and we were hungry. We headed to a Red Robin that we found via the Garmin GPS unit.
It was turning into a sunny day at this point, so we wanted to get some use of the convertible. We drove more around downtown and Stanley Park, which is downtown as well. Around 7 PM, it started getting dark. We turned in the car that night instead paying $30 for overnight parking.
Later that night we went back over to Black Frog for a night cap.
Day three to come…