20 February 2025 – The month and the day pose the question:

Q: We think about tourist attractions in all their high-season dazzle — but what are they like, in off-season drizzle?

A: I head for Granville Island, magnet for tourists and locals alike. The month is off-season, the day is off-weekend, and the weather is definitely drizzle.

I leave the bus with the driver’s tourist-friendly patter still in my ears: Follow Anderson Street under Granville Bridge, it will lead you onto the island, and when you want to return to wherever you came from, the bus stop is right across the street — see? just over there.

Good patter, but not needed today. Only one possible tourist alights with me.

Anderson Street, its car lanes and sidewalks routinely thronged with traffic, is virtually empty.

All those rental bikes, still locked in their slots!

Ditto for the rental water bikes, tied up in Broker’s Bay.

But mid-week off-season has its uses. It is a good time for maintenance, for example, whether to Granville Bridge overhead…

or, inside Net Loft boutiques like this hat shop…

a good time for staff to catch up on pesky chores, and have a bit of a chat.

Despite some people eyeing the hats, this saleswoman agrees “it’s pretty quiet,” and she can finally spend a few moments scratching the stubborn label off a vase she wants to use for display purposes. We gossip amiably about my favourite hat brand (Tilley, that’s a plug), I resist her wheedling to try on one of the latest arrivals, and off I go.

To have another bit of amiable gossip in the Market Kitchen Store.

About cats.

“What’s with cats this month?” asks the saleswoman, puzzled. “We always have these mini-spatulas, but suddenly there’s cat themes all over the place.” I concur, and tell her about the book I had just noticed on prominent display in Paper-Ya — entitled What Do Cats Want? and written (says the blurb) by “Japan’s leading cat doctor.”

Despite respectably full parking lots, the Island’s streets and plazas are nearly empty. The fire pit blazes away outside Tap & Barrel, but any customers have parked their bottoms inside, warm & dry.

Kiosk tent-tops glisten…

a hardy duo hunch shoulders slightly as they check the ferry-dock map…

a hardy gull claims a parking lot perch…

and, hardy as I may personally be, this puddle tells me the obvious:

the drizzle is on its way to downpour.

And I say, Basta.

A wet day in the off-season is a very good time to visit the shops — you can chat and look about in a more leisurely way — but, finally, wet is wet, and it’s getting wetter.

One last discovery, as I walk back south on Anderson, heading for the bus stop.

This poster.

It’s the perfect end to this little story, is it not?

(On the bus I admire a child’s unicorn raincoat, complete with twisted horn on the hood. But… no. That would launch a whole other story.)

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