Vanco-tour

Yes that is me making a ridiculous play on words that really doesn’t work. Oh well.
It is about time that I post up something about my trip to Vancouver, considering Friday morning (less than 48 hours!) I leave for my one month excursion to the eastern part of this continent. I’m still trying to convince my mom to join me for the last leg, while I am in Kingston visiting my grandparents since I don’t want to do it alone. She is very reluctant, which makes me sad. I even had a dream last night that she came with me and we were going to Ottawa (with a bunch of other ridiculous crap, as is always present in my dreams).
But I digress. Our trip to Vancouver was excellent. I’m just going to blog about our time in Vancouver and leave Victoria for tomorrow, seeing as I don’t have “make the longest blog post ever” on my list. This entire trip was a birthday celebration gift from my Adam, since I told him that I didn’t want to have a party or anything, I felt too old for that, I just wanted to spend time with him somewhere. I thought we’d go to Cranbrook for a night, but I ended up getting four nights on the west coast. Not complaining, it was wonderful. We left on Thursday night, after some drama with work (all my trips involve drama, usually it’s concerning concerts though, not work), and we had a quick hour and 15 minute flight. To get from Calgary to Vancouver, we had to fly over the Rockies, so it fulfilled
#518 Fly over the Rocky Mountains sitting in the window seat

The Rocky Mountains are beautiful in their own right, but from the air, it was too much for words. Poking out of the clouds and extending or miles beyond the window, they were just breath (and word) taking. I couldn’t believe how gorgeous they were and how moved I was by the image of them from my little window.

We didn’t do much on the night we landed, since we arrived in the evening and I wasn’t feeling very well. We got used to the new altitude (well Adam did at least, my ears didn’t fully pop for a few days) and hung out. We stayed at the Plaza 500 Hotel which was on 12th and Cambie. It was a nice hotel, albeit a bit small. The biggest complaint I had was that they did not have “Do Not Disturb” signs for the door and they were knocking before 9am in the morning, even on the Sunday morning. I was incredibly tempted to make my own sign, but refrained. We did have a balcony though so I spent some time out there enjoying the ocean air and nice weather.

The next day we got up bright and early and headed out for the downtown. The walk there was fairly long from our hotel, and there was about a million instances of construction (for the Olympics presumably) blocking our set path. It was actually really annoying to be there during this time, since it’s incredibly hard to get around, as a tourist at least. The path we finally managed to take involved the Cambie bridge which provided a nice view of the downtown and the inlet.

The downtown was really busy for an early afternoon and packed full of trendsters. Wandering around aimlessly was surprisingly fun. We made our way along the inlet as well, enjoying the sun and water. Downtown Vancouver is just fabulous, and surprisingly easy to navigate (forgetting the incredible amount of construction blocking numerous streets). The bus system was pleasant and easy to use as well, barring the strange Zone system they have which I didn’t manage to figure out.

Friday was spent essentially just wandering around the downtown area. Saturday we were slow to start, but I eventually made contact with my friend Damien who was in the city for the weekend. Though I said we weren’t expecting a tour of any sort, he took us around down, showing us the Church of Scientology which was in the midst of a protest which I found simply TOO entertaining. All the V for Vendetta masks on all the corners around was amazing and we stopped for a bit while Damien chatted with a protester and I just gawked and took it all in.

We took the SkyTrain over to Commercial Drive, where we spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering up and down the drive, popping into the occasional shop (I bought myself a bobblehead Jesus for 10 bucks, awesome). The street was amazing, bustling, and full of neat signs and people. Such as this kick ass Lost Fish sign. We all had a good laugh over this.

Sunday we got up and left to spend the day in Stanley Park and the Aquarium. Stanley Park certainly lived up to the hype. It was absolutely gorgeous! And there was a raccoon, which much like the Church of Scientology got me a little bit too excited!
The aquarium had a fairly long line, I guess that’s what we get for going on a weekend and on Father’s Day. The line wasn’t that bad, but the people inside were the stupid kind of tourists that can’t wait their turn nor look after their children. We still got to see most of the aquarium, even if we had frowns on for a fair portion of it. I think Adam’s favourite part was a star fish orgy in one of the tanks.

I was personally more of a fan of the jelly fish and such creatures.


After the gong show that was the aquarium, we headed into the far less populated park portion of the area. After a fairly long walk along a road, we found the main walkway along the water.
It provided a view of North Vancouver (a place we never actually went to) and the shore line. It was a really busy day on the path way, with lots of bikers, rollerbladers and families out for strolls. I loved the water and could have stayed the entire day wandering on the path, but we were both starving and had to get ourselves into bed early for our early wake up call to get on the ferry for Victoria.

So that’s the first few days of the trip. Can’t believe in less than 48 hours I’ll be heading out on another vacation. It’s sinking in that I’ll be gone for an entire month! Sort of scary now that I think about it.