Lynn Valley Tour

I got up early today trying to maximize the amount of time I can have for touring around the city. I wanted to go to the Vancouver Aquarium and Stanley Park. While I was having breakfast, a guy named Erik came in telling us about a Lynn Canyon tour that would take us to the forests, waterfalls, etc. in North Vancouver. I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Erik’s tours are not to be missed. Since a walk in the forests sounded more interesting and inaccessible than Stanley Park and the Aquarium (I’ve briefly been to the inside of Stanley Park and aquariums no longer interest me as much as my empathy for trapped animals increases again), I decided to join that tour, which was quite reasonably priced at $11.99.

I was glad I made that decision. Erik was enthusiastic about showing off to tourists the history and beauty of Vancouver. Being an immigrant himself, he has fallen in love with this city and believes that he will stay in Vancouver for the rest of his life. Erik himself is very well travelled and has a lot of interesting travel stories to tell.

There were 18 including myself in the tour. Some were from Quebec, some were from France, Australia, England, Korea, China, Thailand, etc. One lady actually came from Whitehorse! How often do you meet people from Whitehorse who get to see the aurora borealis all the time?!

I made friends with the guy from Beijing who’s studying in Toronto, the Korean girl who’s been travelling for two months now, and the HK lady who’s married to a French guy and has two adorable daughters and is thinking of immigrating to Canada. Hmm yeah... I ended up hanging out with the Asians in the group.

When we were going back to the hostel, I saw that long lineup outside the Greek restaurant again! That was the third consecutive day and it was Monday! I decided to give it a try at that restaurant since I’d love to have some Greek food anyway. I went with Mi-Young, the Korean girl I met from the tour, whom incidentally was also my roommate though we didn’t know that until we were about to part and asked each other’s room number! By the time we got to the restaurant it was maybe 19:30 or 20:00. The line was still long as ever. I ordered a saganaki to be shared with Mi-Young and a lamb souvlaki for myself. Mi-Young liked seafood and ordered a prawn souvlaki. The food was good, but it wasn’t as good as the ones I’ve had in Toronto. But then I wouldn’t know what’s more authentic. The saganaki wasn’t in flames and the Greek salad only had peppers, onions and olives. The service wasn’t as good as I anticipated. But anyway, it was great to have eaten a Greek meal again.