Vancouver

Our first day in Vancouver is a bit of a hazy blur to be honest. We landed at 6am after very little sleep on the flight, and unfortunately we couldn’t check into our room at the hotel until 3pm. The shops and museums etc didn’t open till 10am so we left our bags at reception and found ourselves a table and some caffeine at the nearest coffee shop for a very slow breakfast. We managed to idle away the day bimbling around the waterfront and the shops in the city and for a few coffee stops to keep us going.

It eventually reached 3pm and we headed back to the hotel for a well needed nanna nap :-) We headed out for dinner a bit feeling a bit more alive and walked up to the oldest part of Vancouver, Gastown. There’s lots of old houses and warehouse buildings with small alleys now occupied by funky shops and restaurants. We decided on a bar/restaurant called the Chill Winston which had a large range of food from small plates to share tapas style to big dishes of pork belly or duck confit. We decided on a few medium sized things to share and had our first poutine (chips covered in gravy sprinkled with cheese curds... drool) of what I am sure will be many!

After a long refreshing sleep, we had a quick breakfast in the hotel (well, the Irish pub next to the hotel - smell of beer at breakfast time is not pleasant...) and I made use of the waffle iron to have a freshly cooked waffle smothered in maple syrup yum. To burn off some of the excess calories we’d been eating, we decided to hire bikes and go for a cycle around Stanley Park - one of the biggest city parks in the world.

The park is located on the tip of the north western part of the city and there is a dedicated cycle path all the way around the outside on the seawall. It is a great way to see the whole park and it is pretty much completely flat. We stopped for a very tasty lunch at The Teahouse which is in an old cottage in the park grounds. We decided to extend our cycle trip around the waterfront around the south of the city and all the way past the Science Center to Granville Island. Granville Island is not really an island, but the old warehouses have been converted into theatres, funky shops and most famously, an indoor market where you can buy lots of different local products such as fruit and veg, fish and meat, bakery items and some arts and crafts. We treated ourselves to a huge punnet of blueberries and a some cakes to fuel the rest of our cycle journey.

We had cycled over 25km in 6 hours which meant our carb filled dinner was much needed - thanks to the good old Lonely Planet, we had a lovely dinner at Glowbal in Yaletown.

After picking up our hire car the following morning, we had a few hours to kill before the ferry to Vancouver Island so we stopped at Chris’ new favourite shop - Mountain Equipment Company in Southern Vancouver to get some camping essentials and for me to replace my very loved but worn out walking shoes. It was hard to drag Chris away from the plethora of outdoor goodies, but we had a ferry to catch!