From Victoria To Victoria - Part 2

Our second (and last) day in Victoria, BC started with an early walk to the Chronicles Of Crime book store that we found late the day before.  This time we visited during opening hours.  I introduced myself to the shop owner and she showed me all the Bonds she currently had in stock.

The Chronicles Of Crime store has a huge collection of good quality second hand books.  There is a section of older "pulp" books, but alas held no older Bonds on the day of my visit.  However the well organised fiction shelves did hold a collection of 17 newer Bond books.  There were no Bonds to add to my collection this time but I would expect to find others in the near future if I was able to visit again soon.

Here's some photos of the store, and there's also a website www.chroniclesofcrime.com which is definitely worth a visit.

After my wife and I had some breakfast we paid a visit to a familiar book store. It turns out Russell Books (mentioned in the previous blog entry) has another store on View Street titled Books On View (clever !) as they have so many books for sale.  This store had a few Bond hard backs on the shelves, and the staff were as friendly as ever.  Here's some photos:

Finally, after we visited this store we went to the Royal British Columbia Museum.  Very impressive.  Here's some photos.

Then we caught a bus to the Beauchamp Gardens which were better than I thought...

...before catching the ferry home to Cherry's place in Vancouver again.

We also managed to see some orca whales on our journey.

From Victoria To Victoria - Part 1

As many of you would know I live in Melbourne, Victoria in Australia.  Last Monday while still on our "world tour" my wife and I caught a ferry to Vancouver Island to visit Victoria in Canada.  So it was a case of two Victorians from the other side of the world visiting Victoria.

After landing in Sidney we caught public transport (a double-decker) for the one hour trip to Victoria.  While on the bus I did notice a bookshop, Beacon Books, but I knew we would never make it there so I'm hoping they had no Bonds!

Our journey ended just near the Parliament Building and we made our way to the hotel.

Once we'd checked in and freshened up we started hitting the streets to explore the city.  We soon found Fort Street otherwise known as Antique Row. The first bookshop we found was Shepherd Books but unfortunately there were no Bond books.  The owner explained he'd been cleaned out of Bond books a couple of months ago.

We then walked a little further along the street to another book store.  This one looked a little more promising as the revolving book stand outside the entrance had a Bond for sale on display.

So we entered Russell Books, and it turned out this store was to prove much more fruitful.  Russell Books is apparently the largest second hand book store in Canada.  And it's amazing.  

There are three levels.  The first is street level which has large books, reference books and some remainders.  As far as I'm aware there were no Bonds here, but there were heaps of books.

The next level was downstairs, below street level.  This level had rarer and more antique books.  The friendly staff on this level guided me to a Fleming "Thrilling Cities" published by Pan but I already had it.

The final level was upstairs and contained thousands of paperbacks/softbacks (or pocket books as they referred to them).

On finding the Thriller/Mystery section and then the Fleming titles I was amazed.  There were about 78 Bond books in total, and although many of them were duplicated covers there were still some variations.  This is definitely the most Bonds I have seen ever in one store. I even visited the store the next day just in case I missed anything.  

There are some double ups of book spines in the above photos but it shows all the books.

In the end I purchased five books from this store, four that were in better condition than what I currently had in my collection, and the other a copy of "Licence Renewed" from General Books that differed from the covers shown on the PizGloria.com website as the brown cover was a darker colour and the gold tint was missing.  I'll scan and add this cover to the PizGloria website when I return to Oz in a few weeks time.  I'd never seen this variation before.

The thing that impressed me so much about Russell Books was the way the store was run as if they sold new books, the number of books they had in stock, how organised the books were and how cheap they were.  And I also found the many staff both friendly and knowledgeable.

So overall, this store has to be a must for anyone intending to visit Victoria BC.  And if you can't make it in person there's also the Russell Books website www.russellbooks.com

Finally after about 40 minutes I found my wife in another part of the book store and we left to explore the city again.  We found a nice bakery, some shops for my wife and another bookshop, Chronicles Of Crime, which was closed.  But we would be sure to visit it during our travels the next day.  Part 2 will hopefully be added tomorrow night.

And here's some more photos of Victoria for those interested taken while we walked around the city:

The harbour.  We bought fish and chips from Fisherman's Wharf.

All the lamp posts in Victoria looked like this.  The flowers were real.

View from our hotel room.

A Few Days In Whistler

My wife and I spent last weekend in Whistler.  During the snow season I'm told the village and mountain is flooded with skiers and snow boarders.  During the Summer months, like now, it's full of tourists and mountain bikers.

The temperature in the village itself was very pleasant shorts weather during the day, while at night it did drop a couple of degrees but was still great.  White was still visible on some mountain peaks although it's possible this was glacial.  Cherry (who we are currently staying with in Vancouver, Canada) organised the accommodation, and transport was via Greyhound which took just over two hours and provided different scenic vistas almost for every bend in the highway.

While in Whistler we spent heaps of time hiking, walking around the village shops (along with hundreds of other tourists), watching the mountain bikers ride around the mountains and catching a few sights.  

There was also one book shop in Whistler Village - Armchair Books.

This store carried heaps of new books.  There was also one Bond novel, Faulk's "Devil May Care" which I already had.

So no luck on the Bond front, however I did manage to grab these snaps from in and around Whistler.

Seattle Book Hunt - Part 2

On the return walk to our hotel after visiting Pike Place Market in Seattle we stopped at Arundel Books.  Arundel Books is located on 1st Avenue South very close to Globe Books from my previous blog entry.  The store is down some stairs below street level. 

When we arrived the owner was just locking up for the day but was happy to reopen for me.  This store has many fine and antique books, and upon checking their computer inventory the owner explained he had sold plenty of Bond paperbacks and hard backs in the last five years however currently had none in stock.

Arundel Books has many books listed on the web at www.arundelbookstores.com

Just before I left to allow the owner to lock up again he mentioned another book store in the same building but at the rear.  So my wife and I went up another flight of stairs and found Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers near Occidental Park.  Fortunately this store was still open.  Fearful of the owner closing, as soon as I entered I immediately asked if he had any Fleming. He directed me to the appropriate section of the store where I found a second edition hard back of Fleming's "Thrilling Cities" published by Jonathan Cape.  I didn't buy it though.

The next day in Seattle my wife and I continued exploring the city.  We found a couple more book stores but none carried second hand Bond paperbacks.  It seems Bond isn't easy to find in Seattle !

We did however manage to climb the Space Needle...

And saw the city from a new perspective...

We also visited the glass garden exhibition at the base of the Needle.  If you plan on visiting Seattle soon I can definitely recommend this.  The glass art exhibits were fantastic and I'd hate to think how long most of them would have taken the artist to create.