Vancouver Day 2: Stanley Park

 After a lovely sleep and morning snuggle, we enjoyed our coffee listening to the silence of a Sunday morning as the cool day awoke. I made us a nice breakfast of eggs, sausages, toast and banana and we took our time over our meal, washed up, then popped over to the Costco across the street to get a few items, then headed out on our adventure of the day: Stanley Park! 

The public transit here is amazingly efficient, timely and very frequent, so we hopped the bus to the park and set out on a beautiful hike in this glorious old forest with massive trees and loads of wild growth and wildlife. We saw so many cool birds along the woodsy trails, and along the coast walk! We saw mallards, had a very sweet encounter with a group of wood ducks, geese, eagles, loads of herons, a couple of seals and we even got to see two hummingbirds mating! I got cute video of one of the seals and the wood ducks but unfortunately the hummingbirds were just too quick to get photos of so we just reveled in the experience. The coastal trail was really a delight, listening to the soft lapping of the waters and natural sounds away from the city’s overstimulating noises. And walking in the soft dirt in the forest and seeing all new kinds of flowers and fungi was such good medicine for the body and soul!

After hiking almost around the entire perimeter and some of the interior trails of Stanley Park, we ended our hike with a nice relaxing lunch at Stanley Park Brewing. We shared a pizza and a small flight of beer samples, and had lovely chats as we watched the local herons building their nests in a nearby rookery!

Back to the Airbnb for a cuppa and a bit of R&R before heading out for an evening out to see Scottish band Dàimh!

Here’s some photos of the day so far!

Photos from our first day in Vancouver

 

Vancouver, British Columbia

 We decided (by not being able to decide) to spend our 25th anniversary in Vancouver! We went nine rounds trying to figure out where we wanted to spend this special milestone, finally landing on Vancouver. We always talked about going to Hawaii again for our 25th, but then we thought we wanted to try somewhere new, and we had always talked about visiting here. Plus it seemed easy enough of a trip to plan because it’s just one city, no car rentals or changing cities, kind of a nice inclusive city vacation! There’s less stress in not having to coordinate so many changing locations as we do when we are in Europe, and we want to celebrate each other with a more relaxed itinerary!

We are pooped from the day’s early start, planes, trains, and automobiles so we decided to just grab groceries and pre made dinners to nuke at the Airbnb. The place itself is nice, in a big 36 story high rise, bustling with people, on-site pool, sauna, hot tub, workout room and an absolutely charming little garden with a pond and mallards! The neighborhood is a bit on the rough edge, and Canada definitely has different perspectives on drug usage here so the addiction problem is quite noticeable. But our host had a nice bottle of Prosecco waiting for us when we arrived, and it’s close to the waterfront and has a cute little balcony to watch the comings and goings of the locals. 

Even though I’ve been awake since 4am, and felt ready to call it a day at 5:30 local time, we went out to walk along the waterfront, and so glad we did! It was an absolutely delightful walk and the hotness of the day finally turning a glorious cool made it the perfect way to wrap up our day. So many seabirds and we got to see a sweet family of goslings! Tons of people were out with their kids and dogs. 

We are talking about walking Stanley Park and seeing some water sights, maybe doing a walking tour or just doing one on our own tomorrow. You can see the mountains in the distance and I’d love to get some great shots of the snowy tipped peaks!!