What lovely people

Canadians are famous for being polite:  in the US I heard a tv show describe how Canada intended to approach winning Gold medals at the Vancouver Winter Olympics:  "Excuse me, we thought we might try to win gold in this one, if that's okay with you?  It is?  Oh thank you so much".  (Aside - they ended up beating the US to gold in men's and women's ice hockey, and went completely nuts, the women's team copping a lot of public flak for celebrating in the stadium after the event, when everyone had left).

I had to laugh when I saw a bus the other day with "Out of Service" on its front.  "Sorry" then flashed up immediately afterwards.  You don't see that at home!

And the Chinese owner of a convenience store on 10th and Alma apologised to us for not selling bus tickets, and referred us to her competition on the opposite corner, the 7/11.

The driver of the shuttle bus from Seattle to Vancouver, a Canadian, dropped us off at a place she knew of where we'd get a cab at 10pm, easily, to Kitsilano.  It wasn't a scheduled bus stop at all.

We've had people come up to us and ask if we need assistance if we pull out a map in the street.  And come over to us to tell us that a city bus stop was temporarily out of use, we needed to go to another one.  One woman even missed her bus to give us directions as to the best bus to take.

And the weather is beautiful.  Spring is springing here, and blossom is covering the trees.

Today we're catching the seabus over to North Vancouver to Lynn Canyon and its suspension bridge, and some walks.  We'll probably call into Granville Island on the way home and get some food from the farmer's market to cook for dinner.