Coal Harbour Weekend

One of the most difficult articles that I usually have to write is the one right after coming home from vacation. Usually by this time I have posted all of the pictures up on my blog and my life has pretty much returned back to normal. While it’s been almost ten days since I returned home from Germany, I find that it always seems much longer and that my memories of just being in Europe a week and a half ago are quickly being pushed into the background of my mind by the day to day demands of life.

I think that part of this is the fact that with us vacationing in Europe fairly regularly (this Germany trip my 8th visit in 12 years), that many aspects of Europe are becoming less and less foreign to us. As a result, when we come home it’s not so much of a feeling that we have been on a trip of a lifetime but more have visited a second home for a short time. Europe will continue to play a large part in our future vacation plans but for the next two years we have plans to explore some different parts of the world so it may be a few years before we return back again.

I arrived home from Germany on a Friday which in itself is quite unusual (as I usually arrive much closer to getting back to work) and even unusual in that it was a long weekend so I had almost four full days to recover before returning back to work. But as everyone knows there’s nothing like returning back to work to bring the harsh reality that the vacation is truly over just like splashing cold water on your face.

Since the weather was so good last weekend when I returned back to Vancouver, Barb and I decided that we both wanted to spend some time together (a commodity in precious short supply in the previous four weeks with both of us doing our separate vacations) so we decided to make a day of going downtown to walk around the seawall around Coal Harbour.

Coal Harbour is on the north side of downtown Vancouver just east of Stanley Park and like Yaletown, is one of the relatively new areas being built up in the downtown area. Since Barb and I had made several trips to Yaletown during the summer and walked around the False Creek side of the seawall many times, we decided to walk along the north side by Coal Harbour for a change.

Starting just east of Stanley Park, the seawall at Coal Harbour stretches for several kilometres up to Canada Place. There were still several cruise ships in port when we walked by Canada Place last weekend but in a few weeks they will have all moved south for the season until next spring.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the walk along the Coal Harbour seawall compared the False Creek side is the spectacular view of the mountains on the North Vancouver side across Burrard Inlet. On a sunny day like last Saturday, the view is really hard to beat and reminds me of why so many people from around the world that we talk to tell me that they would love to visit Vancouver.

Baden