Tag Archives: floating

Dinner on a Floating Pub

On our first night in Nanaimo, Nancy had identified a possible venue for dinner.  The Dinghy Dock Pub is on Protection Island or, to be more accurate, is on a floating jetty attached to Protection Island.  There is a small boat that takes people to the island and a good chunk of those people were heading to the pub when we went.

You disembark and are basically at the entrance to the pub so no need to go on to the island at all if you don’t want to.  If we had been there at a different time, it would have been nice to stroll around the island, but we only got there in time to eat and, after we had finished, time was moving on a touch.  You can sit inside or outside and, since the weather was lovely, outside it was!

The food was nice (it’s a pub, not a gourmet restaurant) and sitting outside as the sun gradually went down was so relaxing.  We did have to keep a thought about the return boat since it only goes hourly.  If you miss it, you have a long wait.  Of course, if you are in a pub, what could you possibly do to pass the time?  We timed things quite well and the boat was not long after we had finished so we took the pleasant ride back across the harbor to Nanaimo.

The Most Unpopular Bridge

I spent a lot of my childhood in a town called Cowes on the Isle of Wight.  Cowes was on the coast by the outfall of the River Medina.  The other side of the river was East Cowes and the two were connected by a chain ferry known to everyone as the floating bridge.  I remember as a small boy when the previous floating bridge got replaced with a newer and larger version.  This same one was in service until relatively recently.  A new one was ordered and its introduction to service has not been smooth.

I see the content of some Isle of Wight Facebook groups and complaints about the new bridge are widespread.  Like most people, I don’t know the actual details of what is behind the problems, but the online experts know everything, and the accusations of corruption are widespread.  In my experience, the most likely problem is just a screw up.  People make mistakes a lot and looking for a deeper reason is usually fruitless.  I don’t even know if it is all working properly now, and everyone is rehashing old stories or whether it is still problematic.

We did take a trip on it though.  It was working and we needed to get from East Cowes to Cowes so we gave it a go.  Everything was fine.  However, it was busy and the car in front of us was the last one to get on.  That did give me some time to get some photos of it and I also took a little video too.  As an aside, while we were in Portsmouth, I saw the old bridge laid up awaiting its fate.

I-90 Floating Bridge

I-90 crosses Lake Washington on a floating bridge.  I have driven over it countless times.  It crosses from Seattle to Mercer Island which the freeway then crosses before continuing on to the east side.  I was on that side of the plane when taking off from SeaTac and got a great view of the bridge.  The dead straight floating section and the transition to land looked very interesting from above.  The road actually goes through a tunnel on Mercer Island in a long curve which, when I imagined its path, only added to the geometry of the whole.