Canada: Vancouver, BC

Cycling into Stanley Park

What a welcome relief it was to arrive in Vancouver. 

​Even the airport feels clean, green and inspiring. On your way to the baggage reclaim you walk through a rainforest room, complete with waterfalls and sounds of songbirds; I don't know how they did it but it felt like we were the only people in the whole airport. The total opposite to our usual experience of dashing through crowded, noisy airports.

The calm of Vancouver continued throughout the city and the suburbs, only disturbed by the major meltdowns coming from our youngest, Otto. The terrible two's struck as we were walking from the skyline with a sit down protest and some ear shattering screaming.

We stayed in a great airbnb place, downstairs from a lovely couple who couldn't do enough for us, they even gave us a lift to the supermarket. The place had a garden for the kids to practice their rugby tackling skills, and we had a stack of children's books and a huge TV complete with Netflix for our entertainment.

Jess in Stanley's water park

​Vancouver is a beautiful city, I only wish we'd had more time to explore the surrounds. Two days was nowhere near enough. However, we did manage to cycle Stanley Park, splash around in the water park,enjoy the aquarium and catch up on our tans at the beaches and the open air pool.

The aquarium is right up there with Taronga zoo for an ethical animal encounters. All their mammals are rescued animals, some of which are rehabilitated back into the wild. They have dolphins, seals,and beluga whales as well as tonnes of fish, jellyfish and sea creatures. Jess and Otto loved the 'meet the rays’ experience where you get to hold your hands over a shallow pool and rays come to stroke past you, and the 5D cinema where you get squirted with water and punched in the back of your seats!
 
I'd definitely recommend it with kids.  The beaches were as packed, if not more so, than Waikiki but then it was the weekend and 28°c. And they were full of Canadians who seem a much more cool set than the Americans in Waikiki. We followed a bike towing a huge speaker, blasting out great old skool house music, back from the beach, none of that in Hawaii.

So short but sweet. We loved Vancouver but that was nothing compared to Toronto!!