DATE NIGHT

Mark and I spent have spent many hours walking in our nearly 23 years together. So when my father offered to look after the kids so we could go on a date, it’s no surprise we spent much of our date on foot. We took a bus down close to Kitsilano Beach, walked around the point to Granville Island, and had an amazing dinner at Sand Bar Restaurant: Scallop skewers, spinach salad, wood-baked sable fish and asparagus.

After enjoying the show with our friendly waiter (who had warned us he would be giving us extra service as soon as the fireworks started), we headed down to an Aqua Bus, a small vessel that takes you for a five minute jaunt (at $4 a pop) across False Creek to downtown, but saved us a good 30 minutes of walking. We were meeting the kids at the Seabus, so time was of the essence.

Downtown we walked with a tide of people in the street toward various forms of mass transit - the SkyBus, the "regular) bus and (for us) the SeaBus.

Reunited with our spawn – er kids – we took the bus together on the North Shore. A very high young Vancouverite/skater explained to a confused Spanish woman why Canada is superior to the rest of the world. My English was better than hers, but I still had a hard time following the argument. Something about the low birth rate...