Saturday, June 24, 2023. We felt like we didn’t have enough time at Granville Island yesterday to really do it justice before everything started to close, so we decided to head back today. We debated about breakfast, and eventually chose a place on the way that had good reviews. Unfortunately they were up to a 45 minute wait by the time we got there (20 minutes after they opened), so we ended up going around the corner for ol’ reliable: Tim Hortons.

While we were eating, I noticed that we were close to the Vancouver Public Library which is styled like the Coliseum in Rome, so we walked over to check it out. We would have gone inside (and probably done the Adventure Lab), but it wasn’t open yet.

Part of the reason to return to Granville was for the Kids Market. It’s an entire building of shop’s with kids as the target audience. While that is pretty cool in concept, it turned out to be a little underwhelming. The first shop we stopped in was basically a toy store…and so were 75% of the other shops, most of which carried basically the same thing you can get in just about any Target or Wal-Mart. The items for sale also skewed pretty young, so much so that Mackenzie got a little pouty because there was nothing that interested her.

Luckily we did find one gem on the second floor tucked between a hair salon and the arcade. It was a magic shop, and one of the staff wasn’t shy about showing off his wares. The girls weren’t really very impressed at first, but then I saw that they carried a whole selection of wands for various characters from Harry Potter. He eventually showed us a trick box for making candy or money disappear. That one got the girls attention (because it was really cool!), so Ellie decided to buy one.

Once we were done inside the Kids Market, we continued exploring and picking up Adventure Lab stops and a few physical caches as well. One set of Adventure Labs was setup as an I Spy game where you had to find the item of interest from a distance, then approach to get the needed answer. The girls enjoyed that one more than most.

It started raining as we found the last physical cache in the area, so it was time to go. We decided we had two things on our agenda for the afternoon: finding some old caches and getting gelato. But first, we needed to pick a spot for lunch.

Based on the direction we were headed and Amber’s directive of comfort food, I chose Burgoo. Amber got a pulled pork sandwich with tomato soup, Ellie had a fancier than usual mac and cheese, Mackenzie got a grilled cheese sandwich, and I had chicken Parmesan sandwich. The girls were their typical picky selves, but that just gave us the opportunity to clean up after them, so I wasn’t really complaining.

After lunch it was time for a few more caches. Geocachers like to come up with challenges to keep the game interesting. One well-known challenge is the Jasmer. To qualify, you must find a cache hidden in each month since the game began in May 2000. Since there weren’t very many caches in the early days and even fewer of them have survived today, the older months are the most challenging. We’ve been slowly chipping away at it over the years, but we’re actually getting reasonably close to finishing. We’ve already picked up a few months on the trip, so we went for another one that took care of May 2001.

We still had time before we wanted to head back to the airbnb, so I looked around the map and spotted a park that held a collection of highly favorited caches. One was a newspaper box in the woods, one required calling a phone number to get the final coordinates, and another contained a miniature replica of the trans Canada highway.

At last it was time for Amber’s top priority for our time in Vancouver: La Casa Gelato! They are famous for having a world record number of flavors, with over 500 created and 238 available in store at any given time. Each of the girls got a single scoop cone, while Amber and I splurged for two scoops each. Peanut butter Oreo for Ellie, mint chocolate chip cookie dough for Mackenzie, caramel Oreo + pistachio for Amber, and salted caramel fudge brownie + pistachio for me. (Amber and I were thinking of all the pistachio gelato we enjoyed in Italy back in 2010.) The store can get so busy that you’re only allowed inside while making your purchase, but they have a nice outdoor seating area with benches across the street where we sat and enjoyed our flavors of choice.

Gelato was really the last interesting part of our day. Due to an early start the next morning, we planned an early return to the airbnb, then worked on getting packed up and ate most of our remaining snacks with a McDonald’s supplement for dinner. The girls were in bed relatively early, and even Amber and I were in bed by 9:30.