Sunday, June 17, 2012

day 5 - Vancouver

May 2

Seattle was beautiful and the train ride was even prettier and then the Sea to Sky highway was even prettier.  And then Vancouver topped all of them!  Vancouver is MAR-VEL-OUS! GOR-GEOUS!  It is, FOR SURE, one of the prettiest cities we've ever been to.  The mountains... the ocean... the harbor... the sky... even the buildings... It was hard to pick my favorite pictures to post.  We have hundreds of beautiful pictures of Vancouver.  And I probably included way too many here.

I thought we'd sleep in every day of our trip, but we were up early, by 7 or 8 am, most of the days.  I think the two hour time change had something to do with it.  This day was no different.  We had pricelined our hotel - the Listel Hotel.  It was supposed to be 4 stars.  It was clean and nice enough, but not 4 stars.  I was disappointed so when I got up, I called priceline and asked if we could check out.  The priceline man didn't give me any trouble, said of course, and refunded our money.

We checked out, hopped in a cab, and moved across town to the Pan Pacific... possibly the nicest hotel in the city.  We got a super great last minute deal. The hotel was beautiful.  Right on the harbor.  This was more like it! (The Pan Pacific has the white "sails".  The rooms are in the white building right behind the sails.)


And this was the view from right outside the hotel.  Just a tad bit better than a busy street.


After checking in, we rented bright orange cruisers and rode the seawall around Stanley Park.  Downtown Vancouver is on a peninsula.  The tip of the peninsula is 1,000 acre Stanley Park.  It's crazy how you can be in the middle of a big city, then hop on a bike and be in the middle of a Pacific NW forest.  It was so beautiful.

We rode along the harbor and enjoyed views of downtown...






Then you go around a curve to a lighthouse and get views of Lions Gate Bridge and North Vancouver...




Around the point of the peninsula, you pass under Lions Gate bridge and downtown falls out of sight.  You really feel like you're out of the city and into nature.  There were mountain views and pebble beaches and we even saw a little otter.  The clouds had been threatening rain all day.  It finally rained on us for a few minutes, but we hardly got wet.







The other side of the Stanley Park runs along False Creek.  The pebble beaches give way to sandy beaches and you find yourself in a more laid back, beachy, residential part of the city.





We returned the bikes and asked the bike shop owner where we should eat dinner.  He recommended sushi down the street.  Vancouver is full of sushi restaurants.  I'm not very adventurous.  Matt is though.  He tried all sorts of authentic sushi.  I only had a few bites of real sushi.  I pretty much stuck to the spring rolls, california rolls and chicken skewers.  We started taking pictures of our meals because each one seemed better than the last.  We ate very well on our trip.



After dinner we took our time walking back to our hotel along the harbor.




We watched the float planes take off and land the whole time we were there.  I read Vancouver has the biggest fleet of float planes in the world.






The harbor is really busy... float planes, rowers, barges, tug boats, ferries...  We really enjoyed watching all the activity.



We weren't ready to call it a night so we decided to go to a comedy club.  We didn't know how raunchy it would be but we figured we could always walk out.  We're so glad we went.  We had so much fun.  There was a contest that night so 6 comedians battled to make it to the next round.  The jokes were witty and amazingly pretty clean.  We laughed and laughed and laughed and spent the rest of the trip quoting the comedians.

3 comments:

Melissa said...

What a great trip you guys took!! You and Matt were definitely due to get away alone! Your pictures are amazing by the way. I enjoyed them very much. =)

sinika said...

I loved seeing your trip!! Thanks for sharing. I need to make it to Vancouver someday.

Moe said...

Matt is quite the photographer ... :)