Vancouver BC

We celebrated our 44th Wedding Anniversary in Vancouver, BC. So you'll be blessed with a few Vancouver blogs this week. We wisely stayed at a Bed and Breakfast. I saw a panoramic photo of Vancouver and asked the host, when was this taken? 1988, she said. That was two years after the World Fair and Vancouver has vastly changed since. I took the first photo driving into the heart of down town. The buildings are high rises at the old World's Fair site. This is from the walking tour guide: "The small forest of high-rises ringing the north shore of False Creek, where you're now standing, is the creation of one company -- Concorde Pacific, owned by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka Shing. Formerly a railway switching yard, the area was transformed for the Expo '86 World's Fair. When the fair came to an end, the provincial government sold the land to Li Ka Shing for a song on the understanding he would build condominiums. And did he ever. The towers have been rising at the rate of three or four a year ever since." The current population of Greater Vancouver is 2,180,000. That's probably up a million from when the photo at the B and B was taken. Everywhere you go, people. There's an interesting mix of British and Chinese and lots of history there. But a great place to visit and not that far away.