Life in the Inner Harbour

For our extended (and by extended, I mean four days) we are lucky enough to be moored at the Causeway floats directly in front of the historic Fairmont Empress hotel. In thousands of tourist photos taken this week, we'll be one of the boats floating scenically in front of the massive ivy covered hotel. It will be easy to pick us out in all those pictures... we're the small, messy one.

One of the interesting side effects of this excellent location, right in the heart of downtown, is the sheer amount of activity in the area. There is almost constant foot traffic past the boat, even though we're near the end of the dock. Just now a small group went by speaking Russian. Small, tubby harbour taxis go past our portholes every few minutes between 0900 and 2100. Seaplanes sweep in or take off every half hour or so. Music and clapping pour in the hatches at all hours from the performers on the walkway above. And the Clipper or Coho ferries blow horns at unexpected intervals through the day, causing Mandy to jump out of her skin unpredictably. In most harbours... well, for starters, most small craft harbours are well away from the heart of the city (Victoria and Vancouver are the notable exceptions I can think of in this area... I don't know Nanaimo well enough to say for certain whether it counts or not), but even when they aren't, they're rarely an open tourist attraction in and of themselves. You either can feel stuck on your boat, away from the action, or find yourself only stopping in to sleep or eat.

There is none of that here. We're right in the middle of it anytime we prairie dog up out of our hatches. It's like pitching a tent in Pike Place Market. We don't have to go anywhere to see and do fun and interesting stuff, it's all right here, parading past the boat. It's a unique experience, even more intimate than False Creek in Vancouver due to the smaller scale of the floats.

This morning, after Mandy's mandatory Starbucks stop, we walked around to the west side of the harbour, about a mile walk, and then took a quick harbour ferry hop back across to Fishermen's Terminal. There is a large chandlery over there, Trotacs, which we thought might be likely to have better prices than the small specialty shops on this end of the harbour, but even so they were pretty expensive. The American dollar should have a ten percent advantage over the Canadian right now, but even so things simply seem more expensive here. I'll be holding off on all but the most important purchases until we're back in the states.

But anyway, it was a nice walk, and there were a lot of people out... we're in the city's living room, it seems, and it's not a bad spot to be.