The next part of our holiday involved heading north and across the border to Canada.......Vancouver to be precise. Our first day involved washing......again......and then a walk around to check out the surrounds, oh and to buy a Canadian sim card because our US sims wouldn't work of course.....dooh! For the next 12 days in Canada, we would be joining a Cosmos Tour and making our way around the south west corner of the country with 42 other tourists. Most were Aussies, with a few from New Zealand, the UK, and one couple from India and another from the US. Our first day was a bus tour of Vancouver visiting a few of the staple tourist destinations including Stanley Park.
Lions Gate Bridge from one angle.......
and another.....
I found myself taking quite a few photos of some of the plants.......these looked like miniature lilliums, but I'm really not sure what they were.
Hannah and I (along with a few others from the tour) took up an optional afternoon tour, which included visiting the Capilano Suspension Bridge and Tree Top Walk. We thought that it was a busy day, but our guide said that it was fairly quiet. There was a bit of rocking as we walked across, with quite a few taking it very slowly.
Hannah and I put a lot of steps on our Fitbits, courtesy of the Tree Top Walk
and the Cliff Top Walk.
An "I'll take your photo if you take ours".......just to prove we were there!
We then took a Gondola up to Grouse Mountain.
The weather was beautiful, and there was still plenty of snow on the ground.
We got to see Grinder and Coola, the two orphaned Grizzly Bears who live at the top of the mountain. On all of our trips to the National Parks in the US, we have never seen a bear in the wild. We really haven't had much luck, and we're hoping that these weren't going to be the only ones that we would see on our trip.
On returning back to our motel, we decided to head to the Lookout Harbour Centre Tower. On our walk, yes we tried to walk everywhere we could, we passed this banana station which was getting set up for the Vancouver Marathon, which was being run the following morning. I have never seen so many bananas in my life, although some of them did look a little on the green side.
The view from the tower was great, but we decided to head down and have dinner before sunset.
The pub we chose just happened to have the same name as the one that Russell and I eat at quite often when we are in Adelaide (as it's just around the corner from the motel). My photo is rather dodgy, as I was trying not to look like a total twat taking a photo of a door of the pub.....lol!
After some deliberation and recommendations from the waitress, Hannah ordered something called a Slumdog......a hotdog wrapped in garlic naan bread deep fried with something and something else. She was devastated when the waitress returned to say that they had sold out, and she had to settle for Poutinerie instead. I was happy with my Chicken Pie.....lol!
On Sunday morning we said goodbye to Vancouver, climbed aboard our coach, and made our way out of the city before the marathon runners hit the road.
Our next stop was Kelowna.
Linda :)