10th July 2016 - Vancouver BC - Kms to date 3177

Kms today 25

Today we rode into Vancouver to have a look at Gastown and at the city centre. Gastown was named after Gassy Jack a local publican given to verbosity. Gastown was the original part of Vancouver when it was being established as a trading post for furs and timber. The wooden  buildings were mostly burnt down at sometime and rebuilt as more substantial brick warehouses and stores. There was a "skid row" area were homeless people or drug addicts lived a precarious existence among the tourists. Many buildings had plaques outside describing its history. Later large department stores opened and one called Woodwards filled a whole block.

After lunch at a pub we walked up town. France was playing Portugal in the Euro soccer final and the pub was full of people watching the game. We went to the BC Art gallery and there was a special exhibition about Picasso and his "muses" or women.  He had about 6 long term companions of which he married two - a Russian ballerina Olga and a young woman Gillot, who was his last. The art works on display showed how his painting  changed as he changed his muse. There was a very interesting documentary about his art as well.
After our dose of culture we headed back to Burnaby and took Joan and Steve out to dinner at a local hostlery call The White Spot, Steve's favorite eating house. We started looking at some of their family photos. One showed them all standing beside a combi van on a tour of Europe.  They had traveled a lot and Joan came to Belfast with her father Bill in the 1980's. Our father Victor used to correspond with Bill.  Val, Joan's daughter, invited us around to her place as it was her stepdaughter's birthday. There we met the birthday girl Kelsey and Val's other children Coady and Montana plus partners. It was a very pleasant evening and we discovered that Joan and Val were going to be in Jumping Pound at the same time we are for the Calgary Stampede.