Picnic in the Park

The sun was shining and we had no other plans so we decided to go exploring our new neighbourhood. We found this fabulous park down on the river about 5 minutes walk from our place. It's got a lovely big pond and loads of green expanse. It also has a track to walk to the Granville Island Market (about 2 kms from our place) so we can keep well stocked up on fresh produce and things.

We had our picnic lunch and then in true Van style the rain came so we had to abort the mission but it was nice while it lasted. I think we'll being spending many a lazy afternoon down there in summer, just relaxing and taking in the world.

Totem poles

Thought we should share some culture with you :) These are some totem poles that we saw at Capilano. Each pole tells a story of the tribe and some of their history.

Gastown

Gastown is a historic part of town which has this cool steam clock (top picture). Its a real tourist drawer as every 15 minutes the clock goes off and plays this kind of tooting song. Gastown has all old cobbled stoned streets and loads of beautiful old buildings. The statue is of some guy called Gassy Jack who founded Gastown. It really is a nice piece of history except that is a prime tourist joint with loads of crap with the Canadian flag on it (some extremely tacky!) so unfortunanately there are homeless people everywhere. They are very forward and I had one guy come up to me in an internet cafe and ask for money. The major downside of Van is the homelessness - there are people asleep in doorways everywhere and people begging outside all the shops. Its hard to say no but what can you do? I did give one dude money the other day cause it was hot and he asked for money to buy a beer on a hot day - his honesty earned it I reckon!

A few of the sights of Van

This photo perfectly shows the weather in Van. It is overcast and stormy looking most of the time. You have to take an umbrella everywhere cause the sun will be shining and next thing its raining! Oh well...

This is the Vancouver Art Gallery. We've yet to go there but the building is amazing.







Not sure what this building is but it to is beautiful. There are loads of old buildings in Van considering how young the city is (1870).



This is the Burrard Street Bridge - one of 3 main bridges to get ot Downtown. The river is a bit like the Yarra - you really don't want to fall in!

Playing tourists

Last Wednesday the sun finally came out and the rain clouds that are here all the time went away so we decided to venture over to North Van. This is the view of Vancouver from the Seabus which is the ferry to North Van. Its mad that we're cruising across the harbour in a boat and there is seaplanes landing and taking off all around us.

Jesse enjoying the view.

North Van is the leaving point for the ski fields. Is it wrong that it's summer and there is still snow on the mountains??

We found that there isn't much to do in North Van so we ended up going to the Capilano Suspension Bridge which is Vancouver's first ever tourist attraction. It's been open forever and in the old days people used to make a day trip of visiting it. Some of the original 120 year old buildings are still there and the bridge itself is made from Fir trees from the forest.

As this shows its a place made for tourists ( a Japanese tourist took this for us!) but its a lovely place to spend the day and see some of the different bush and plants that they have over here. Apparently there are bears in the forest but we didn't see any - yet!

The river itself is beautiful and loads of salmon run in it after they release them from the Capilano Hatchery. They get a massive amount of rain in the park and it shows in the massive trees in the rainforest. Some of them are hundreds of years old and taller than you can even imagine.

We finally got a photo together :)

Away at last!

So when it finally came time to leave we were both fairly nervous but full of excitement and trepidation as we waited to board. We were at the airport super early to get exit seats and being first in line at check in paid off even if it meant a well early morning!

Its only too fair to say that we flew on possibly the ugliest plane in the Qantas fleet....

We made nice with a hostess on the plane and got served champagne as we were taking off which was a great start to our big adventure and life in Canada.

Jules managed to sleep a bit on the plane but Jesse had too much fun watching movies on the Melbourne - LA leg of our trip. After 5 very painful hours at LAX (that place sucks big time!) Jesse finally fell asleep on the flight to Vancouver - ps Air Alaska is as bad as it sounds!

Leaving drinks...

Hope fun was had by all at our leaving drinks. It was a good nite but weird to think that we may not see everyone for so long... Hope everyones heads were okay the next day. Thanks to people who made a special effort to be there on the nite :)