Vancouver Day 1

I headed down into the centre of the town in the morning with not much plan of what to do or where to go. I eventually found my self down at a waterfront next to the Convention Centre which looks like a ship docked into the Wharf. I picked up a couple of maps from the info centre there and then walked across town to the Olympic Ice Hockey Venue which was closed. I pondered whether to walk over to The Village but it was a good distance form here so I decided to take the metro train out to the Scout Shop address I had found earlier in the Hotel. It was about 3 stops up the line (this time I validated my ticket!) and about 200 years from the station. I picked up a number of badges and had a browse of the uniforms but decided not to buy one as I already have a Scouts Canada shirt. After a lengthy chat with the manager about the state of Scout Camps in the area, I set off find the Brewery the bar man had told me about the night before. Granville Brewery is located on Granville Island which is more like a spit of land that sticks out under a huge bridge over the river. The area was once all warehouses but now has been converted to small speciality shops and companies. You can actually smell the brewery before you find it – the smell of hops is certainly distinctive! I booked in for the 4pm tour for the princely sum of $10 (which included 4 'free' tasters of their beers. Most of the brewing the company does is done off site but they produce their seasonal special still in the Brewery and sell all of them from the adjacent bar. The tour was fairly short, about 20 minutes and was led by a chap from Preston of all places. The taster beers were all very good and included a Pale Ale; very hoppy, A wheat beer (Halfwiezen); full bodied and not too gassy, A 'bitter' (forgot the name!); Fairly similar to a Thwaites, and their Seasonal beer called Nut Brown Ale which was supposed to have been a porter but had ended up more like a Newcastle Brown Ale abate at 8.5% it had a little more kick. A couple of pints more and chatting to a couple of the others on the tour and it was getting on for 8pm, and they were shutting the bar! Alas they only had a licence to sell beer whilst the tours were running and as we had been on the last tour of the day, 4 hours of 'tasting' was apparently as far as they dared push it, damn it!