Blogs from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, North America - page 13

Less than a week after returning from my Camino de Santiago pilgrimage (see ) I was off again, this time with Linda. Our son-in-law Evan had a week long human genome conference in Vancouver and he was taking our daughter Rosanna and grandson Connor with him. We thought we would keep them company while he was at meetings all day. Our previous trips to Vancouver had been one day in and out visits, so this would give us a chance to really get to know the city. Our only concern was the weather forecast...a typhoon was headed that way and rain and wind was predicted for the entire time. But what else can one expect in the Pacific Northwest in October?! 13 October 2016 Thursday. We spent the morning packing and then drove up to Greely ... read more

Highlights of our 8 Weeks in Canada and Alaska – 13 August to 7 September 2016 As with every time we travel I try to wrap up our experiences and activities after we visit another stunning country. However, there is always a risk of understating what we have seen or done. The following is an attempt to do so, with contributions from Tom & Sheryl, my incredible traveling partners. We have thoroughly enjoyed our 8 weeks and I have thoroughly enjoyed travelling with them both. I hope they have tolerated my over-enthusiastic planning and “I have an idea’’ statement they heard frequently lol!! Here goes the list · Beautiful, flower-covered Victoria and the Fairmont Hotel on Vancouver Island · Mountains and glaciers along the Inside Passage · Not being cold on the cruise ship o Alaska ... read more

What would we do today? Of course, how about motor foot again. Today we set off to the main business and shopping area of Vancouver set amongst 30+ storey buildings. We also needed to find a bank or ATM that took MasterCard as we had found that a couple did not. After looking around the huge underground Pacific Shopping Centre we visited the Roman Catholic Cathedral (gothic) and the much smaller Christ Church Cathedral. Both were virtually swallowed up by the surrounding skyscrapers which were nice but not impressive after the huge cathedrals of Europe that we’ve visited. We then went back to Canada Place to go to “Fly Over Canada”. There were long queues so we had quite a wait. We’d heard it was good but didn’t know what to expect. Finally we got into ... read more

We arrived in Vancouver at 2.30pm after a fairly non-eventful 14hour flight from Nelson apart from fog in Nelson which looked a bit dicey for a while. Our taxi took us directly to the Azure Apartments which Mary and David had pre-booked for us behind the George Wainbarn Park and onto the water front opposite Granville Island. The area looks like “apartment city” as there are blocks of multi storeyed apartments everywhere. Ours is very roomy and quiet with a monster outside deck. We settled in then walked up Richards St to find a food market to stock up on breakfast food and any other necessary supplies. As much as we wanted a bottle of wine to take home there is nowhere to buy it. Outlets appear to be government controlled and are few and far ... read more

Wednesday, August 17th, 2016 Day 15: Vancouver, British Columbia – Learning to ride a bike again! Today marked the end of our Alaskan cruise. Since our flight was not till the late evening, we still had a full day to explore Vancouver. Renata and I decided to check out Stanley Park. Stanley Park, is an enormous park in the middle of downtown Vancouver. Since it is a large park, we decided to rent some bikes to travel around the seawall. We had not ridden bicycles in years, so it took a while to get accustomed to riding them. The Vancouver seawall, is the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront path. Along the way we passed a bunch of totem poles, Brockton Point lighthouse, the ‘girl in a wetsuit’ sculpture, the Lions Gate Bridge, and Siwash Rock. The whole ... read more