Vancouver

We think we may have found our favourite Canadian city.

Vancouver: it has my essential criteria for a great city of the world - it embraces the waterfront. It is just so inviting to get out and enjoy the city; soak up the atmosphere; and enjoy the views.

The water front has fantastic paths all the way along, from False Creek at the end of the harbour right down to Stanley Park. Often it is duplicated so there is a specific walking path and riding path. It has great food, fun markets (Granville Island Markets - lots of the great food there) and just for us, we had picture perfect blue skies and a summer heat wave.  As Canada does great snow fields, it also caters for summer activities well: there are free water parks for kids dotted around the place, so its easy to get wet and cool down. There are tennis and basketball courts that are free to use.

Ice-cream at the water park = happiness

The city is close to the ski fields and Whistler and Big White are world renowned; it gets some snow but not too much (not enough to warrant winter and summer tyres, as is the case in Eastern provinces). The city is going through a process of gentrification and there are some fun areas with lots of restaurants and arty things happening. I'm sure the Winter Olympics in 2010 helped this along. The Olympic Stadium and Athletes Village for the Games are so central, so it would have been a fun time to be here. It would be easy to live here!

Now to any great city, there is a downside. And in Vancouver, it is the rain. According to Wikipedia, it rains about 160 days a year. It also has about 5 weeks during summer when it doesn't rain at all .... so for the rest of the year, that means it rains nearly every second day! I couldn't handle that! So, we aren't moving here just yet!

We have spent most of our time around the waterfront and Stanley Park. Stanley Park has recently been voted by TripAdvisor as the best park in the world and we agree! There are picnic areas, play grounds, pools, water parks, greenery, walking and cycling tracks galore. It is so busy that the cycling track is one way around the park - about 8.8 kms. There are also other paths which criss-cross the park, being a mixture of road, walking and cycling tracks. 



We were lucky enough to get amazing weather and the park was very well patronised. We hired bikes, including a tag-a-long for Sophie to ride behind Tony; a tandem in which I was lead rider; then a single, which Olivia and Lachlan shared - the other was on the tandem with me. We covered some big kilometres each day, with lots of food and water park stops. Simple, great days. 

Tony, Lach and Sophie visited the Aquarium which they loved. Liv and I explored some shops, which we loved! For both of these, we used bikes to get around the city, which was easy and safe. The landscaping is beautiful, the many flower beds contain amazing plants and in particular, huge hydrangea flowers. We loved being in this city!

Departing Vancouver also means departing Canada. We have been in the country for exactly 6 months and have had the most amazing time. We've been so lucky to experience life in Quebec and have loved getting to know Montreal as a city and a community. Our travels have shown us diverse but amazing parts of Canada. This is not au revoir, but only a bientot ... we will definitely be back to Canada.