Vancouver: Hot Smoothies and the Aquabus.

So, the forecast was not so wrong after all. We awoke to a torrential downpour that somehow kept up the whole day. That put a bit of a "damper" on things, but we made the best of it. To add insult to injury, for some mysterious reason, the free breakfast offered by the hotel only lasted from 6:30-8:30 am. Oh well, at least that gave us a chance to try the Tim Horton's doughnuts across the street. They were quite tasty, as hoped. Oddly, they also offered "hot smoothies" in butter, raspberry, and orange flavors. We couldn't see how that could be good.

Next we walked a soggy mile or so to take a water taxi to Granville Island Market. The water taxis turned out to be these adorable little tugboats called an Aquabus! We couldn't get enough of watching them scoot around. The market was pretty amazing, featuring an embarrassment of incredibly fresh produce and hand-made food.

Bussing back downtown, we made good on our promise of the night before to hit a bunch of great shopping. Vancouver certainly does not lack in great shopping, offering stores we have only seen in NYC. After all of our Canadian money was gone, we decided to dry off over a nice cuppa. Auri had found the Secret Garden Tea Co. over the internet before we left and it was perfectly English and charming! We had already stuffed ourselves with french fries covered in gravy ("poutin") at the market earlier, but we couldn't resist Secret Garden's tiny pastries and delicious scones with clotted cream. Yum!

We crossed the border back into Washington with ease. Vancouver is definitely a place we will be visiting frequently...