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Published: August 29th 2015
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Vancouver
The flight to Vancouver was great, we had a spare seat so we could spread out. I watched “What to Expect when You’re Expecting” and my favourite film, Titanic. We caught the SkyTrain from the airport to Vancouver City Centre. We loved Vancouver as soon as we stepped off the train. It reminded us of Sydney just with more mountains. We easily found our AirBnB place and got the keys from Christine. The apartment was stunning, floor to ceiling windows overlooking Vancouver and Grouse Mountain. It was really modern and had a super comfy bed. We went to the supermarket in search of strawberry cream cheese but we were unable to locate any much to my dismay. Jetlag got the better of us and we were asleep by 21:00.
We awoke at 3:30. No amount of trying was going to get me back to sleep so I finished my book and waited until the reasonable hour of 5:00 to have a shower. There isn’t much on the TV at 5:00, except a TV show called Property Brothers, two twins who find run down houses for couples then spend $100,000 doing them up. I watched
more of this than I care to admit.
Whilst enjoying my property show I booked us on to a bike tour at 2pm with Vancouver Bike Tours.
We went to Best Buy when the shops opened to buy a new camera after the Gulfoss fiasco. Oli wanted a cheap one and I wanted a pricier one, we went with the pricier one.
We then headed to the bike place to see if we could take the bikes out earlier to bike around the seawall, which we could. So we spent a couple of hours cycling around Stanley Park. We went to a supermarket called Pomme which stocked loads of healthy food, they had a little deli counter and seating and a microwave in the corner to eat it. I got some raw hemp bars which were amazing.
We then had our bike tour at 14:00, Jeremy was great, there was another couple on the tour and we cycled around until gone 18:00. We went to an icecream parlour that had hundreds of flavours of ice cream including Wasabi. I had banana peanut butter and Oli had Tiramisu cheesecake.
Part of the tour we went to Granville Island which was really quirky. We then caught the SeaBus back.
We got back to the apartment around 20:00 and I hate to admit it but I fell asleep on the sofa. Oli tried in vain to wake me up but I was a goner. I woke briefly to brush my teeth and crawl into bed.
We awoke at the slightly better time of 5:00. We took the 246 bus to Capilano Suspension Bridge then switched to the bus to Grouse Mountain. You can either take the gondola up or do a walk up the mountain called the ‘Grouse Grind’ which is just under 3000 steps to the top. We decided to do the walk slowly as I didn’t want to mess my legs up for the whole trip. It took us an hour and 40 minutes to reach the top which is pretty average. It was very steep but fine if you did it at a slow pace and took regular breaks. They recommend you wear proper trainers an athletic wear to do the walk, we saw some very ill equipped people doing it in
silk ballet slippers. Lots of locals use it to test their fitness and run up it with a gps tracker. There was a leader board at the top and one of the boards was best times for that day, one chap had done it 5 times already that day in an average time of 45 minutes.
We got some food at the top and ate it on the outside terrace overlooking the side of the mountain which was beautiful. We had a look at the bears and then took the gondola back down and then took the bus to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. It was around £20 each to get in and there is a cliff walk, which is a glass and mental structure that juts out of the mountain, the suspension bridge and a tree tops walk with various smaller suspension bridges. I’m not the best with heights but it was really fun. We took the free shuttle back to Vancouver then had an hour or two catching up with the Property Brothers.
I managed to stay awake and we went out for dinner to a thai place called Sala Thai. We had
chicken satay, garlic prawns and one of their special dishes, scallops and prawns in a thick red curry with coconut flesh and peppers. It was all delicious.
Unfortunately, we still ended up falling asleep at 21:30. Hopefully the jetlag will end soon!
Next stop, Seattle.
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John Peacock
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Property Brothers
Mum says she watches Property Brothers here and her choice of ice cream would have been vanilla. Looks like you are having an awesome time!