(Skip the travelogue, non-Gatecon stuff, and go straight to the Gatecon 2004 Report.)

Airline: Continental
Hotel: Hilton Vancouver Airport in Richmond, Canada

The first part of the trip was spent at Gatecon before we continued on to Vancouver Island. We've now visited this area of the world in July, September, and October and have never found it to be anything less than breath-taking.

(edit to work with next paragraph!) There were no other official events scheduled until the evening's cocktail party so we took a cab to Gastown since Joe hadn't seen it the last time we were in Vancouver. We walked the brick-lined streets and soaked in atmosphere. I stopped at a gallery that had had the most exquisite sculpture the last time we'd been in Vancouver. The artist had a show in Calgary and had moved the piece there so Joe didn't see it. I purchased an argillite pendant there, a moon face.

One day during the con was unstructured during the day. We wandered a bit and made a wonderful discovery. We stayed in downtown Vancouver last time, just east of one end of The Seawall, and heavy construction in the waterfront area had discouraged us from exploring further.

This time, we exited the Robson shopping district, where we had a fabulous lunch at Steamrollers, a bit east of where we'd been before and fortuitously ran across an entrance this time. How glad I am that we returned! The Seawall is not listed in any of our tour guides and what an unimaginable oversight! It's literally miles and miles of stunning beachfront path encircling a great portion of the city for biking, walking, running, pushing strollers, whatever. It's open, free, to the public. I can very easily see us planning to rent bicycles on our next Vancouver trip and traveling the length of it.

Here is a map of The Seawall that I found at Blockwalk.ca.

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