We had to get up early to leave Tofino. By early, I mean we had to get up half an hour before our usual weekday wake-up. This is contrary to our usual vacation schedule, where we don’t set an alarm and try to get out of bed as late as we can. In this case, we had to catch a ferry, check in at our hotel, do the laundry and drop off the car before 16:00.
The thing we tend to forget when we’re on vacation is the cycles of everyday life. It’s not as if we don’t know there are days of the week; we tend to forget what they mean. We're surprised when we can't reserve a restaurant on a Monday until we realize that many restaurants are closed on Mondays. In the same vein, planning to drive in downtown Vancouver is easy when you don’t think about traffic. Yesterday, we planned to drive around the city (during rush hour, to our surprise), which made the laundry part of it far more painful than expected.
The plan was to drop off Karine at a nearby laundromat after checking in. We did our research. The hotel suggested two laundromats, and we found a third one closer on Google Maps. Turns out the closest one we found would have been more believable as an opium den than a laundromat, at least based on the crowd lying in front of the establishment. We chose the next closest, who, it turns out, only did drop-off and pick-up. Luckily, the third one met all our requirements. Half an hour of driving around in rush hour paid off in the end.
Dropping off the car at the airport was a liberation of sorts. It does mean the end of our vacation is fast approaching, but it also means we’re back to a more traditional vacation beat: walking everywhere. All in all, it took a little over an hour to drive there, drop the car, and take the sky train back. I must admit that now that Vancouver transit accepts contactless payment on transit cards, taking transit is much more convenient. Tap your phone at the gate, and you get in. Tap it to exit, and you‘ll be notified of the journey charge. As a tourist, it’s fantastic! No ticket to figure out. No machine to navigate. No fare list and options. Take my money, Vancouver transit!
Today was a walk in Stanley Park. That was the entire goal of our day. We, of course, took care of planning great breakfast and dinner options, but the star of the show was Vancouver’s version of Central Park. If Central Park were to the North of the city, on a peninsula, with less management, and much taller trees, to sum it up, Stanley Park is to Central Park what Central Park is to a parking lot. Anyway, bad analogies apart, it was a great 4 hours. Karine met big trees and big tree stumps, saw the sun (albeit still shaded by the remaining smoke) and spent some time by the beach.
Tomorrow calls for rain. We’ll be museum-hopping, and I’ll likely be comparing them to the museum we first visited on our trip and failing. Stay tuned!