English Bay

The main point of the weekend, or at least the thing that everything is planned around, is the Celebration of Light fireworks show Saturday evening over English Bay. There will be two more shows this coming week, but those folks don't realize that it is going to be really hot and incredibly smoky - so we're glad we reserved this weekend. We stay at the Sylvia, right across the street, and there are thousands of food options in the neighborhood, which makes it all very easy.

The challenge is always figuring out where the tide will be when the show actually happens - the tide is typically rising on these summer evenings. We want to be in the front row. If we're too high, there will be folks in front of us. If we're too low, we'll get wet, and by then there won't be any place to retreat to, since several hundred thousand people will have filled in behind us. But despite M's apprehensions, we got it right. People who set up in front of us had to move and we still had a few feet of dry sand between us and the water when the show ended.

When we first started doing this, the show was sponsored by Benson and Hedges, but that was a problem in the politically sensitive northwest. HSBC took over for awhile, as I recall. Now Honda is the main sponsor. It's set up as a competition among national fireworks teams (are there really such things?) - this night was put on my Japan and they did a very nice job. One of the things we like about being up close is that you see so much more of the low level stuff and the choreography - not just the big blasts high in the sky.

Here are links to a couple of our earlier trips:
2008: English Bay
2006: English Bay