I had a free day in Vancouver and since I had been already been there the previous year (and had been there about 20 years earlier as well), I had been to most of the obvious places.
But Colleen, one of the guides on the dogsledding trip, had been living there for some time and I had asked her about other things to do in Vancouver.
Her suggestions were 'go to the zoo', 'walk up Grouse Mountain' or 'visit the museum of anthropology'.
Walking up Grouse Mountain didn't really appeal to me. It's a path about 3 km long with an elevation gain of 850 meters, so it's like walking up the stairs in the Empire State Building. About 2.5 times. (No wonder the path is called "Nature's Stairmaster" or just the "Grouse Grind".) Supposedly 100000 people hike up there per year, but they may as well do that without me among them.
And anthropology isn't really one of my interests.
So the plan was going to the zoo.
The hotel had a little advertising leaflet and while the Greater Vancouver Zoo is a bit outside the city center (about 60 km), I had nothing else to do all day, so I thought I might give it a try.
The hotel staff tried to help, but was a bit doubtful, with comments from "You can't get there without a car." to "We had a guest once who claimed that he made it - took him three hours to get there, though."
They directed me to the Greyhound bus station, recommending to take an overland bus. There I found out that the bus wouldn't go to Aldergrove (where the zoo was), but only to Langley, about 12 km away.
Which was still fine, since I was willing to take a taxi from there, but the next bus wouldn't go for another two hours, so I by the time I got to Langley, it would be 1:30 pm, so even if I found a taxi right away, I would be at the zoo around 2 pm, which would severely limit the visit, since it was still 'winter season' at the zoo, with closing time at 4 pm. Buy the last bus back to Vancouver would be leaving around 4 pm from Langley, so essentially I would have to leave the zoo latest by 3:30 (assuming there was a taxi available there) or I would be stranded in that area for the night.
By then, I was getting a bit frustrated and decided that I might as well just give up on trying to get there by public transport and just rent a car. It seemed somewhat silly to rent a car just to visit the zoo, but then again: Why not?
So I decided to walk back from the overland bus station to downtown Vancouver and if I spotted a car rental agency before noon, I would get in and rent a car.
But I didn't spot any on the way, so I arrived at the Waterfront station with the plan to go to the zoo utterly trashed.
So I decided to go with 'modified plan b' and hike Grouse Mountain. But since I still didn't fancy the idea to walk up 850 meters, the plan was to take the 'Skyride' gondola up the mountain and just walk down the Grouse Grind path.
On the ferry, I took a look at the map of TransLink bus routes. Turned out that the advice from the hotel staff to go to the overland bus station was not that helpful. There is a regular bus line to Aldergrove (number 502, in case you ever want to visit the zoo), that runs every 30 minutes. So I could have just taken the Sky Train to Surrey Central station, then the bus to Fraser Highway at 264th Street, leaving only the final 3.5 km, which is less than an hour to walk. But it was too late for that now.
After taking the gondola up Grouse Mountain, I encountered the next bit of frustration.
The Grouse Grind Trail was closed for the winter.
And there were no other open trails down the mountain, so I would just have to ride down with the gondola again.
There was also little to do while up on the mountain.
The last time I had been here, I had taken my first flight in a helicopter, but it was still winter season now, so there were no helicopter flights. And while there was a lot of skiing and snowboarding going on, I don't do either, so no alternative for me.
But there was something on Grouse Mountain that hadn't been there 20 years previously - a set of ziplines. (A zipline is sometimes also called a 'flying fox'. It is basically just a steel cable with one end being higher than the other, so you can attach yourself with a harness and glide down.)
There are a total of five ziplines on Grouse Mountain. A very short one right next to the gondola station (basically just a 'trainer' - the odd steel coils in the last image above are part of its breaking system), two reasonable nice ones crossing a small lake back and forth, and two really interesting ones, stretching from the peak of Grouse Mountain over to the peak of Dam Mountain and back, which looked like fun. (I'm usually not fond of heights, but somehow I never worry about ziplines.)
But it turned out that the big lines weren't operational yet (at least not during the week, maybe during the weekend) and I could only go to the first three. Which I did (since I was there anyway) and it was nice, but kind of frustrating having a 'sneak preview', but not the big attraction.
So no zoo, no mountain-to-mountain ziplines, no walking down the mountain.
It was a sort of ok day (Vancouver is a nice city to be in, after all), but not as good as it could have been, especially after a vacation like this.
And, not being able to walk down the mountain, I decided that, after taking the gondola back down, I might as well walk the rest of the way to the hotel, especially since the weather had turned from so-so to really nice.
Back at the hotel, I went to the balcony for another look at Vancouver, when I noticed a seagull on the balcony next to me, sharing the view.
Had some dinner, watched the sunset, got some sleep and drove to the airport the next day to fly home.
And that would have been the end of the trip.
I checked in, noticed that the flight was delayed (but that's not unusual), but half an hour later the flight was cancelled.
Due to some 'volcanic ash cloud' most of the European air space had been closed and nobody knew how long the situation would remain that way.
There was a lot of confusion, some frustration and tons of misinformation, but it worked out reasonably well for me (I got home five days later than expected, which didn't matter much).
Because updates were on a day-to-day basis, there wasn't much that I could do during that time, since most of the days I had to get ready to check out of the hotel by noon, only to be told half an hour before that to stay for at least another day. So there wasn't that much of an opportunity to go anywhere.
But at least on Friday it was clear that there would be no flights on Saturday, so I had the Saturday off.
So I did what I had failed to do three days earlier. I rented a car for the day and drove out to the zoo.
The zoo turned out to be nice, but a bit odd.
It covers a huge area and gives the impression that it was originally conceived more as a 'drive through safari park' than a zoo. (It was originally designed more as a 'game farm' than as a zoo.)
And it can't quite decide whether it wants to be a 'local wildlife park' or a zoo with animals from all over the world. Most of it seems to be dedicated to Canadian fauna (such as Arctic wolf, fox, musk ox, grizzly bear, reindeer and bison), but there's a smaller part of it with the more usual 'zoo animals', such as lions, hippos, giraffes and rhinos.
I visited the zoo on a Saturday in spring (though, admittedly, a rainy one) and was a bit surprised that the place was mostly empty. Which was great for me, since I got the feeling that the place was there just for me alone (not quite true, since there were two other cars in the visitor parking lot, so there must have been other people around), but a bit strange for a zoo, which is essentially the family trip destination.
As any zoo, it had nice photo opportunities.
So, in the end, I actually made it to the Greater Vancouver Zoo, though under different circumstances than expected. (And I'm fairly glad that I didn't try to go there by taxi from Langley - there is no chance to catch a taxi back to anywhere at the zoo. The only reasonable non-rental-car way would be to walk back to the 502 bus line station.)
But since I was close to Langley by now and had a car available, I decided to visit the museum of flight.
I don't care much about trains. No train spotting for me. But planes are fine.
The 'Canadian Museum of Flight' is more like a bunch of stuff collected by a group of enthusiasts (which, admittedly, pretty much fits the definition of a museum) than a proper museum. Some interesting stuff in there, but no really significant exhibits. And some of the things (especially the Handley Page Hampden) look more like they are standing in some kind of scrap yard than a museum exhibit.
Not worth driving there from Vancouver, unless you are a real plane fanatic, but ok as a detour on the way back from the zoo.
Having the car and still some time left, I decided to visit the Museum of Anthropology.
It took some time until I 'got' that museum. Luckily I did before I left.
Colleen had said that it was interesting to visit, but on first glance, it seemed like any other anthropological museum. A couple of big artefacts to look at, which, unless you are a specialist, usually don't evoke more like a 'looks nice' or 'dull' response.
And the totem poles looked a lot like the ones I had seen at Stanley Park, so nothing new there. (Yes, they are probably from a completely other time period, culture and area and are not similar at all, but as I said, I'm not a specialist.)
Some of the stuff had surely some local relevance, for example the big sculpture showing "The Raven and the First Men" is pictured on the Canadian $20 bill, so it will be familiar to Canadians.
And outside is a variant of that (which I originally thought would be an earlier version of the same artwork), called "The Raven and the First Immigrant", which plays on the same theme, but with a more political overtone (and created three decades after the 'more modern' looking work).
All pretty clever and meaningful, but essentially lost on me. (I only learned about this stuff when preparing this web page - I didn't learn any of this during the visit itself, except for the $20 bill trivia.)
There were also a couple of contemporary art installations covering the theme 'borders', but they also came across as 'nice looking', without being really clever, touching or provocative.
And the 'small stuff' exhibition seemed oddly non-informative.
Besides the big pieces in the main hall, there was a large room with display cases and lots of smaller items.
But there didn't seem to be much of a noticeable system behind that. While seemed to be some clustering of artefacts according to culture, it was far from clearly labelled and while there were explanations for some of the items, most had just a small label giving a general term (like 'vase' or 'fabric', which you can usually figure out yourself), the region and some internal number.
So this is a 'representation' from 'South Africa'.
Well...
In this specific case, it is obvious that this is reasonably modern (the keys and the 'Gen-X' are strong hints) and it's probably some sort of artwork. But for most of the other items, it's hard to tell whether they are old or new, whether they are unique or mass produced goods, whether they are of historical significance or just 'stuff', whether they served a specific purpose or are decoration.
To a certain extent, the museum fails in one of the basic tasks of 'modern museums', namely to educate visitors. (Which is a bit different from 'archives', where the basic tasks are preservation and providing original material for scientists.)
But...
Is providing long descriptions and explanations really sensible in a modern museum?
I know that it tends to annoy me in science museums, when there are simulations, long explanations and 'things to do' on computer screens in the museum.
Almost everyone has a computer at home (especially those who go to science museums). If I can get the information on a normal computer, it's much more comfortable to do it at home, where I sit comfortably, don't have a crowd of people around me and a queue behind me.
Science museums are interesting when I can play with stuff that I don't have at home.
And doesn't similar reasoning apply to other museums as well?
If I see something interesting in a museum, I can look it up later on the Internet and find out more about it (usually - I didn't find out much about the 'representation' above, since the 'Search the MOA Collection.' function is only 'Coming Soon' and I couldn't find any other references to it). There's no real need to provide lots of text and have me standing around in a museum reading. The time is much better spent looking and exploring.
And that was the point where I finally 'got it'.
Because I finally noticed that there were drawers under the exhibition cases, but there were no locks on them. (I had previously assumed that these included some stuff that was 'off limits' for visitors and ignored them.)
And it turned out that there were more exhibition items (under glass) in these drawers.
And there were lots of drawers.
All unlabelled.
And suddenly the place turned from a dull museum in a kind of treasure hunt.
It was much more interesting to pick a random drawer and open it, just for the curiosity what might be inside (and it might turn out to be anything from child's drawings, toys made from beer cans, fabric samples, arrowheads to ivory carvings and boxes with wood and gold inlays) than looking at (more or less) the same stuff clearly visible in a display case.
So in the museum turned out to be 'interesting' in the sense of 'having the attention or curiosity engaged' and afterwards I spent much more time looking specific things up than I would have spent in the museum itself, reading explanations.
Visiting the Museum of Anthropology was the last touristy thing I did on this trip.
I was expecting at that time to have to hang around for quite a bit longer (at one point my return flight was supposed to be almost two weeks later) and I had more or less started to settle in at the hotel (actually buying a small laptop to be able to work from my room, thus not missing too many days at work), but then I got an earlier flight back home and the vacation was over for good.