Day Two : Vancouver: Christmas Eve

Long airflight, not a great sleep but wonderful entertainment in the form of our air steward who regaled us with her comedy and funny Christmas accessories. Imagine seeing your meal trays trolleys decorated with flashing lights as she made her way to serve you your meal or drinks! Match that with her humorous stories and laughter made the flight that much more enjoyable!

Long queues ahead of us again as we made our way through customs and immigration. I imagine that every international city departure and arrival in the world would have the same long queues! It is a given thing that you simply have to endure…and endure we did!

Arrival at our hotel! A beautiful Fairmont Hotel on the Vancouver waterfront although our taxi driver did attempt to take us to a different one…. but we found our way! Bags bought in…. a drink of water and what do you think we did! Yes…walk. Now, think about it…with Marc would we do anything different?

Our first day/evening walking took us around Gastown, along the seawall towards Stanley Park attempting to kill time. Why? Well, we wished to attend the Cathedral Midnight Service to welcome the Christmas day in. We had actually experienced two Christmas…..one on the plane coming here and one about to happen. Being in a different part of the world, we both wished to welcome Christmas Day in by attending Church.

Well. What do I say about this service. Not being critical of the Catholic faith since we had previously experienced, many years ago, an amazing midnight service in Salzburg ( and we didn’t even understand the language there)….but this service was sterile, cold, and disengaged! A beautiful choir in the mezzanine area, but the choir itself sang all the songs. The Cathedral was absolutely full, with at a guess, approximately 1000 people there. It was heralded as ‘the place to go on Christmas Eve”. But what a shock! No warmth, no smiles, no carol singing, no connection with the people who actually took the time to attend, no greetings, no celebrations, no engagement with the massed general public at all.  The service was so slow. Many pauses with nothing happening. Rather than a celebration of the Baby Jesus, instead it felt like it was a penance to be endured. I have to admit, Marc and I actually started laughing when the deacon began the Gospel reading in a chant form. This chant was sung in two melodic(?) tones only and it went on and on and on and on and on. Personally, I am religious and have my own faith, but this scenario was quite, quite ridiculous to me,  hence the laughter which both Marc and I tried very hard to subdue. Did we win…not quite! I am sure that the ushers were frowning at us as we soundlessly tried to hide our laughter! I guess they were thinking “those rude Australians”…not that they would have known we were Australian as we did not speak with them at all when entering the Cathedral! Not surprisingly, we left before communion, and interestingly, we were not alone. No, it was not quite the welcome to Christmas day we wished to happen, and we both felt rather sad that what should have been a beautiful warm experience, this ‘Christian’ encounter was so uninspiring and distant to the common people like us! I think I will stick with the informality of the Uniting Church services from now on!

2am bedtime after a long flight from home, meant the alarm had to be set to have breakfast. I guess we were still adjusting our body clocks to the change of time zones and Northern Hemisphere and therefore it was quite hard to wake up- but we did. However, when the alarm went off…I thought it was the hospital ringing Marc and of course you can imagine my reaction to those shrill tones! Poor alarm…it did nothing wrong! Porr Marc!

And what did we do after breakfast??????

You guess it – we walked.

18.5 kms to be exact(26, 890 steps).

Christmas Day: Stanley Park ………    the last time we walked this area a few years ago, we went inland and across the park. Today we walked around the edge of the park, following the Sea Wall, which was quite different to our previous saunter…stroll…walk … although surprisingly, again in snow despite the locals having told us on both occasions that it rarely snows in Vancouver and never stays long! A few years later- a few years older – my feet and back certainly told me that they we were again walking in the snow but this time a little too far! We were not alone on this bleak Christmas Day. Our Christmas Day in Stanley Park  was shared with many others who were also walking the same trek as we were. There were also so may runners, complete with their running tops, wind parkers, scarves, and their shorts with their tights underneath! Such a funny picture to watch! Mustn’t laugh – as we could not run the treks they did, but interesting costumes on each runner! Humorous too I might add!

Now Christmas Day could not be celebrated with a little part of home. My best friend Margie had packed two slices of Iced Christmas Cake and given this to Marc to ‘produce magically’ on Christmas Day to ‘surprise’ Lyndell. A gift from her for us to share on this special day so far away from family and friends. Such a lovely gesture…such a delightful morsel of food and very much needed after walking all that distance.

By the way. Marc was quite happy to see the end of our prolonged Christmas day(s) as he was quite over the Christmas music- the same 15 Christmas songs being played on an endless loop that you heard everywhere you went! Me – well I kept singing along with them! ( But yes, they were starting to become repetitive for me also!)

Merry Christmas from Vancouver Canada