Vancouver Bicycle Map

Hello from Vancouver (5): Gastown and My Final Explorations

After my extremely interesting walking tour of the Downtown East Side, I decided to complete my exploration of the city with another bike trip. In my mind, the bike is just the perfect way to discover a city, it gives you a greater range than walking, you do not need to wait for buses, and you exercise at- same bonus!

I realized that I had not even seen yet Gastown, which gave me a perfect excuse for another round of exploration. I went to rent a bike spokes again, talked to Phil who was so helpful to me on Saturday in my exploration of Stanley Park and I left for another few hours to see a bit more of Vancouver before I ' ale had to leave. I decided to ride home in the Downtown East Side because I was not able to take pictures during the walking tour. I drove along the waterfront trail past Canada Place and Harbour Centre on the east side of town.

I retraced my steps near walking tour this morning on the bike and took some photos of some buildings along the road. A place that stands out clearly been the Sun Tower, a building created between 1911 and 1912 that used to be the headquarters of the Vancouver Sun. I crossed over to Chinatown, which still had such an unusually orderly and organized feel to it.

Then, I explored Gastown, one of the most historic Vancouver. Its founding father is a salon owner loquacious John "Gassy Jack" Deighton, who in 1867 built a square near the corner of Water and Carrall streets to enjoy the local mill workers and researchers of gold on their way to the Yukon. In the 1870s, Gastown is a multicultural community, with lounges, hotels and grocery stores, brought to town because Vancouver was chosen as the terminus Canadian Pacific Railroad.

In 1886, he had 1,000 buildings and 3,000 residents. Then, in 1886, a fire erupted and burned the city to the ground. Although the destruction of the city, the fire had started off the tallest building west coast history. After an economic decline in the early 20th century, Gastown has become a virtual arms from the 1930s through the 1950s until a group of local merchants and the owners to put on the map in the 1960s by renovating historic buildings and transform them into one of the attractions of the city above.

One of the biggest draws is the Gastown Steam Clock, the first in the world, created by Raymond Saunders, who has a small shop nearby. live steam, pumped from a plant that heats more than 100 buildings downtown, the mechanism of clocks and blows the whistles. Every quarter of an hour the clock sounds the Westminster chimes while the whistle announces the great hours. Gastown Steam Clock is a favorite spot for tourists to photograph. Gastown is also home to another major attraction of Vancouver: an innovative educational and cultural experience called Storeyum: 100,000 square feet is within the site showcases the colorful history of the Canadian west coast of dramatizations.

Of course, I have not had time to explore Gastown and all its shops and restaurants in detail, since my plane was leaving in a few hours and wanted to head back to Stanley Park again to catch another glimpse This most beautiful urban green spaces. So back I went from bike building the new convention center and back on the waterfront in Stanley Park. As it was my second time in the park I took a few things I missed the first time around, I saw the girl in a sculpture, wetsuit created in 1972, which is a size bronze statue of a woman in a wetsuit, with flippers on his feet and pushed his mask on his forehead, and sits on an intertidal boulder just offshore of Stanley Park.
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