Underway in Vancouver

After a pretty emotional and tiring few weeks, Dan, the boys and I finally began our adventure, and arrived in Vancouver on Tuesday afternoon, to be met by torrential rain. Amazingly, we managed to stay up until 9pm (5am UK time!), and awoke to a dull, but thankfully, drier City on Wednesday.

Following a hearty breakfast consisting of pancakes with maple syrup and corn beef hash, we hired mountain bikes to explore the much venerated, 1000 acre Stanley Park. Thankfully, by mid-day, the sun appeared and we had relatively leisurely (especially for Ollie who got muggins to push him up most of the hills) 8km cycle through the forest and along the sea wall.

Since then, we’ve managed to pack in some of Vancouver’s best, including Whale Watching (sadly no whales but a beautiful 4 hour boat trip!), a visit to Capalino Suspension Bridge, Vancouver’s oldest visitor attraction, and a seaplane flight. Yesterday was capped off with one of the local delicacies, a Japadog -essentially a Japanese version of a hotdog consisting of a pork sausage, Teriyaki mayonnaise, seaweed and onions, from a street vendor. Doesn’t sound great, I admit, but believe me, they are delicious!

Whale watching

The boys are so far managing well, and thanks to Facetime, coping better than I expected without Adele being around. Cameron is already missing his friends though, so I’m hoping that Facetime will again come to the rescue this weekend!

First impressions of Vancouver – on the plus side, it’s a laid back, friendly, multi-cultural city, surrounded by stunning scenery. The only negative is the high cost, especially the food.