second day in canada, vancouver. the weather is almost hot, sunny, a blue sky, and friendly people all over. on all occasions like breakfast, riding a bus and being unsure when to get off, or queuing in line, people start to chat with you. canadians really tend to be very friendly - we were really surprised and a little impressed. we even had fun on our first bus-trip[002,004] as people discussed where we should best get off to get to our first destination, china town[005-036]. there we headed to the "dr. sun yatsen gardens"[006-034] and came just in time for a guided tour which provided loads of information on the chinese garden, the background of the china town, chi and yin and yang. the tour was really nice. walking through china town we came by the "millenium gate"[036], and ended in gas town[037-058], an area with loads of wonderful, old houses, the statue of "gassy jack"[045] (a celebrity founding the first bar in the 18th century). right next to it is the famous steam clock[050-056]. we arrived there right at noon, and heard the whistled tunes from it's steam driven pipes. the rest of the clock is actually plain mechanical, as our guidebook revealed, but the steam looks really lovely. time for a coffee break, so we rested in the "trees organic" cafe, where i had an americano coffee with a fantastic cheese-cake[058] ("voted the best cheesecake in vancouver" it said, though it did not state who voted, and how many participants there were). after a while we came to the harbour area[050-156], where we found a japadog[062,067] stand - a mixture of japanese cuisine with the good old hot-dogs. strange but really delicious. yet it is not enough for two people, so we had some dim sum[075] to get us stuffed. a landmark in the harbour area is the"canada place"[050-111], and right next to it, "the drop"[110-111], a piece of artwork to remind us of the importance of water, thus the shape of a water drop. announced as a new attraction was the 4D "fly over canada". we thought it sounds promising and bought two tickets for the show. the first part was a big screen presentation of canada and its people, combined with stunning wildlife and nature impressions. the second part was the flight over canada, where you are positioned right in the centre of a half-sphere. sitting in seats that can slightly be rotated you "fly" over various regions of canada, starting from vancouver over to - what we thought - the northern regions, ranging from spring to winter. a really amazing ride, highly recommendable. unfortunately it only lasts about ten minutes, but it were breathtaking ten minutes. this made us hungry for more, and for the real thing. so we booked a "classic panorama tour" flight over vancouver for the following day. woah, we're so looking forward to that. after this day full of wonderful impressions we began our stroll home, encountering seals[137-141], seagulls[142,144-145], loads of plants[148-149] and other animals[150-156]. when it got dark we even spotted two cats and in a garden even a skunk - unfortunately it was way too dark to take a picture of it. vancouver is a green city - there's trees and parks all over the town, and loads of flowers. every lamp post is decorated with hanging flower pots, and most balconies have plants too. really beautiful and colourful. track for day 02.