Saturday - Vancouver Again
On Saturday after our cruise ship landed, we found that we weren't allowed to check into our hotel. It was too early in the day for our rooms to be ready. It’s a common-enough problem with cruise timing. The YWCA offered a bag holding area we could use. We traveled with lot of baggage, too, because the ship and the YWCA had plenty of space.
By the way, about the YWCA Hotel in Vancouver, BC,
Cost: Expensive
But in Comparison: Half the price of other downtown hotels nearby
Staff: Very good
Facility Quality: High
Result: Recommended
My wife asked me to sort through our options for the day. I had a fistful of brochures because the city is big. There are plenty of activities to choose from. I wanted to find a low-key one during which we could a) see more of the place and b) make our own tour, of sorts. I ended up putting the Vancouver Aquarium at the top of our list. It is Canada's largest aquarium, which seemed promising, and it was bound to have a lot of Pacific Northwest attractions, also cool.
Vancouver Aquarium
We took the bus. That may seem like an odd choice but I wanted to take public transportation, not a taxi or a ride share. Diane felt the same way. You can get to know a lot about a city by its subway or its buses. To our surprise, the Vancouver buses were accommodating for city visitors. They are not just for commuters with pre-bought cards. Some other places (ahem, Chicago) made us go to a special shop and buy blocks of passes. Vancouver accepts a credit card swipe - and that's all it takes. No preparation necessary. Pretty sweet.
During the ride we saw a lot of college-aged folks getting on and off. Some of them were, like us, headed to Stanley Park. Now, from the park to the aquarium I knew we'd have a hike - but that was also the idea. The park was large. Our destination was in the northeast center of it. I thought walking through the place was a way to see people and understand a little about the city. That proved true, too. We got a glimpse of the river harbor action. I enjoyed the various fitness-and-recreation crowds (joggers, cyclists, dog walkers, dog trainers, musicians, etc.). On the way back we got to see (and hear the bagpipes played for) a Scottish-Canadian wedding outside a restaurant in the park.
You can buy aquarium tickets without waiting in a line if you stop by a booth along the way. They're even discounted slightly. Why wouldn't everyone do this? Of course we got our tickets there. But we encountered (and bypassed) a big ticket line at the front entrance to the aquarium, so obviously not everyone goes to the satellite ticket counter.
Inside, the exhibits divided quickly into themes. There was the BC Coast, Pacific Coast, Tropics, Amazon, and a special Jellyfish display. We explored them all. The bigger aquarium tanks took two floors of vertical space. The biggest displays of all - those for the sea otters, seals, and walruses - were actually outside to give them more room.
We found plenty of animals in terrariums, as well. Some of them had cute names, like Quentin Tarantullino. Those names are mostly for the parents, I think. References to movie directors aren't going to tickle the fancy of most five year olds or get them to like the tarantula, which mostly hides from them anyway. I also liked the common names for some animals, like those in the Pleasing Poison Frog terrarium. It's a darned nice name. Those little frogs do look friendly. Don't pet them, obviously. 
Our tickets included the 4-D Movie Salmon Run. After enough walking from place to place, taking a seat for a while seemed attractive. However, only a minute into the show, I blinked, fell asleep in my chair, and woke when the "4-D" experience began by shooting cool air into the back of my neck and hitting me with soap bubbles. (The bubbles were supposed to enhance the film of salmon swimming upstream in a bubbly river.) Although the focus was on the salmon, the film showed us plenty of brown bears. Grizzlies are a subset of the brown bears and, as a group, the brown bears are pretty dangerous for humans. Black bears can get shy; you can literally scare them away sometimes. Polar bears are more often immediately deadly; too bad for you. But brown bears are inconsistent. People can feel safe around them and, suddenly, a brown bear changes its mindset and people become its prey.
There's no question about salmon being the prey of bears, eagles, foxes, and more. Animals on the pacific coast are dependent on the salmon runs. This was a film for family audiences, though, so all the shots of salmon losing their battles were shown from a distance or they otherwise managed to avoid showing gore. Soap bubbles, that's the thing. We got washed by them twice.
We skipped the science exhibits that were strictly for kids (and grudging parents). Instead, we next headed outside to the big animals.
Well, the sea lions were loud. They had the biggest tanks, dove the deepest, and they were charming but, still, they liked to yell. In a separate set of trenches and tanks, the seals stayed quiet to the point of being almost invisible. And in their set of narrower tanks, the sea otters were the most charismatic. It really did look like they enjoyed showing off to the audience at times. They pranked each other. We watched one otter steal ice from another, mostly for the laugh of it. Neither otter seemed to prize the ice. It was something to be hoarded by the otter who wanted to lie in it. It was something to steal and eat for the otter who wanted to annoy her aquarium-mate. Little kids crowded around the otters more than any other exhibit. I sympathized with their choice.
Amazingly, on the way back from the aquarium and at the southmost edge of the park, we saw an English Bay otter in the wild. I have no idea how common the sight might be. A dozen other people in the park stopped to watch the otter as well. It kept diving and ignoring the audience. Presumably, it could not obtain a standard feeding time in the wild the way one might in an aquarium, so it had to go about its business, hunting and foraging in the bay.
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