Vancouver, eh?

Welcome to Canada, the international portion of our journey.  We had to go through immigration and customs, I promise.

Vancouver has a great public transportation system, so we easily got around without a car, especially because we were staying in a little hotel that was nestled right in the middle of downtown.  Downtown Vancouver is surrounded by a lot of water and sandwiched between two big bodies of land above and below.  To the north, you can see beautiful mountains on a clear day, and to the south, you can see buildings and residential areas.  We walked A LOT around the area.  The first night we were there, we covered a large portion of the boardwalk (they call it the “Seawall”) and part of the city on foot.

Our full day there happened to be Victoria Day, which is sort of like our Memorial Day – everyone gets a day off of work, but there are no huge celebrations or anything.  We decided to rent bikes all day to explore the area, which turned out to be the best decision.  Our first stop was Granville Island, a small area south of downtown that is not actually an island.  They are an art central area with many little shops and an art institute.  There is also a large public market, which reminded me of Seattle’s Pike Place Market on a smaller scale.  We got food, looked at handicrafts, and watched street performers.  They also have the Grandville Island Brewery, so we couldn’t miss that of course.

After Grandville Island, we biked up the Seawall to Stanley Park, a natural reserve north of downtown.  The Seawall follows the perimeter of the entire park (about 8 km) which makes biking and walking easy and fun.  The two coolest areas we saw were the laughing statues and the totem poles. Check out the picutres below!

In all, I think we biked about 8 or 9 miles, which doesn’t even include the amount of miles we walked!  We ended the day by watching the sunset at the beach and eating yummy Korean food for dinner at a hole in the wall place (always the best!).

Continuing with the “travel north” trend, next up = Alaska!

The lovely skyline of Vancouver

Grandville Island!