Road Trip :: Vancouver, BC

There is a suburb of Portland called Vancouver {or "the Couve" if you prefer} so when I returned to work this past week and mentioned we went to Vancouver, no one looked very impressed or interested. Once I realized why, I promptly added a little BC at the end...this is important because Vancouver, Washington isn't that amazing. Vancouver, British Columbia is.

The entire city seems to be made of glass. When the sun starts to set, it reflects off the buildings, and as cheesy as this may sound, the whole city starts to sparkle a bit.

As soon as we arrived at our hotel in downtown, we immediately fell asleep. It was two o'clock in the afternoon but multiple nights of camping will really wear you out. Once we woke up there wasn't too much time left in the day but we did manage to explore the famous Stanley Park. I have never seen a city park so amazing in my life {so naturally I didn't take hardly any photos of it to back up that statement...but trust me, it's awesome}.

One of my favorite things about Vancouver is that everything was in English and French. My French isn't necessarily fluent but functional. I don't speak a lick of Spanish {except "the door will open to the left" which is said repeatedly on my train ride in and out of Portland each day} so am strictly in English-mode while in the U.S....I loved getting a bit of French practice in while in Vancouver.

I love how this guy is actually suited up for his balcony ride.

My absolute favorite part of Vancouver was Granville Island. It's a small island filled with local artists, studios, an amazing kid's playground and water area, and the public market {think farmer's market but on a dream-like scale}.

Isn't this the cutest entrance ever and it's into a concrete factory. Seriously, this place was magical.

We found lollipops made entirely of maple syrup. Um, yuck.

And some other interesting items...

Including these tea bags, which make me wish I actually drank tea...

And they were grilling salmon for people walking by on the street...

And this is me, shopping for a Canadian kitten to rescue and take home. I told Mark if he'd let me adopt one, I'd name it Maple. It was a no go.

So I really can't say enough great things about this city...with the exception of one thing. It is a nightmare to park you car. There are plenty of spaces. That's not the problem. It's the cost! In less than 48 hours, we racked up 40 dollars in parking fees. We went into the library one afternoon to use the Internet {thankfully we are a bit behind on the current trend where folks can walk down the street and get online with their phones} and the librarian told us the parking fees were how the city is paying for the Olympics. She seemed less thrilled about it than we were. But on the bright side, we each got a library card for the Vancouver library that will last us one year.

On another note, Mark and I know remarkably little about Canada. This became very apparent to us when we kept referencing Robin Scherbatsky, a character on the show "How I Met Your Mother". Her character is from Canada and she is sadly our primary source of Canadian knowledge.