Good Old Vancouver.
We walked in to Gastown from the Waterfront Station to have a look at the Steam Clock. It is fascinating to watch when it blows it’s whistle and sounds like a hissing Big Ben. We had to wait for some time before it blew so we had a small walk around Gastown.
Gastown is one of the first settlements which gave rise to the city of Vancouver around the 1860s. Since then it has metamorphosed a number of times from a centre for trade and commerce to an area of warehouses to load logs and timber. Later it became the centre for the city’s wholesale produce distribution, and also the centre of the city’s drinking life. After the depression the area went into decline and came to be known as the Skid Row. After the 1970s Gastown has been slowly rehabilitated and now has a number of respectable businesses like fashion and interior décor boutiques, restaurants, nightclubs, bars as well as professional offices of law firms, architects and computer firms, music and art studios and film and acting schools, and a few art galleries. Of course, there are still some areas in Gastown where we saw some destitute people begging or just hanging around the streets. It is best to avoid these areas after late evening.
We enjoyed our short walk and had a good look at some of the old heritage buildings lining the cobbled sidewalks. We then came back to see the most important tourist landmark of Gastown, the Steam Clock doing it’s hourly job.
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This review is the subjective opinion of a TripAdvisor member and not of TripAdvisor LLC
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