Sonya's Blog - Day 334 - Brunch and Granville Island

Sonya’s Blog - Day 334 - May 21st - Brunch and Granville Island

Blake has a cousin that lives in Vancouver, Lise. We had met her when we were visiting his other relatives in Nova Scotia. Lise was visiting at the same time as us and we said we would give her a call when we made it to her end of Canada. Well, here we are all these months later and we are all going out to brunch.

Lise knows of a nice place in West Vancouver, so it was decided that she would come by the campground at 10 and we would head over there. Café Ça Va and it was in Ambleside in West Vancouver. It was a very trendy area of shops and restaurants and Café Ça Va was super cute. They had a nice table set for us. We were so busy gabbing away, it took us awhile to order. We all had lovely breakfasts in the end and it was wonderful to visit with Lise again, she is so easy to talk to.

We decided to head over to Granville Island after brunch. First we popped by the campground and walked Kizmet. Then we hopped in the truck and followed Lise to her apartment, parked the vehicles and then walked over to the ferry. Lise lives in English Bay, which had lovely beaches and lots of shops and restaurants. We popped in to see Lise’s condo, which was really nice. We then walked along English Bay (picture to the left), until we came to the little bus ferry and we hopped on that to get over to Granville Island. Here is our picture:

First we walked over to see the houseboats, which are really floating homes. They only have a handful of them, but they are similar to the ones we saw in Victoria. I wanted to know how expensive the homes are, so I looked it up when I got home. Well I couldn’t find the Granville Island floating homes for sale, but I did find some others for sale. They are not as expensive as I thought they would be, I think the most expensive one for sale right now is in Coal Harbour for just over $300 thousand. I guess the real expenses come with the monthly moorage, strata and maintenance fees, which can be upwards of $1000 per month. Another interesting tidbit I learned was that Granville Island is not owned or operated by the City of Vancouver, it is a federal enclave surrounded by the city of Vancouver. It is managed and operated by CMHC and has been since 1972. CMHC was responsible for turning Granville Island into the bustling arts and market centre that it is today.

We walked through the markets and checked out all the stalls. We then stopped and grabbed some lunch. Isaac had some pizza, Lise and Natasha had some perogies that were served up by a very funny German guy. Blake and I shared some Indian food. Blake wanted to get some lemon merengue pie, because Lise had told him there was a place that had some good pie. They walked over and got some pie and he and the kids shared it.

It was almost 5 by this time, so it was time to head back. It was wonderful to spend the day with Lise and we are hoping to see her once more before we leave Vancouver.

Getting back on the ferry-bus to return to English Bay:

We got back to our campground at around 6 took care of Kizmet and had a light supper. Isaac had made up a board game, so Blake and I played with him. It involved the Sorry gameboard, two decks of cards and two ships from his tie-fighter game. It was fun and Isaac and I ended up winning (it was a partner game, but Natasha wouldn’t play and Blake had to play with pretend Natasha as his partner).

Sonya