A Frugal Vancouver Day With a $14 Bike Rental Mistake

Community ping-pong tables on the walk back to the hotel pulled her in for a game. Years had passed since her last match. Muscle memory kicked in, she said, and she would have kept playing for an hour or more. Her husband eventually dragged her away.

Dinner was udon at Marukame, a short walk from the hotel. She ordered a $14 Tan Tan Udon bowl and a $1.99 side of zucchini tempura. Her husband picked curry. The meal, she said, was "as delicious as it looks in this photo."

The evening plan called for rented bikes and a Stanley Park loop. Her husband's bike was glitchy. By the time they fixed the problem, both felt sweaty and frustrated, with no energy for an hour-long ride. The styrofoam helmet made it worse. She spent $14 to travel two blocks. "Oh well," she wrote, "at least my phone showed that we got 14,556 steps."

The day's accounting favored the free entries. The steam clock and the library patio cost nothing. The ping-pong tables were free as well. The udon bowl and tempura side totaled $15.99. The bike rental, at $14, matched the price of the main course. The one line item that flopped was also the only one with a rental contract.

The final morning began with an improvised breakfast. The hotel buffet had no bagels, so she built a sandwich on a croissant, loading it with lox and a generous hand of capers. She called the result "still spectacular" and wondered why it took until her last day in Vancouver to configure it. "Might have to recreate it in the future," she wrote.