I love Vancouver. There is just little not to love about Vancouver.

First, it has this great park called Stanley Park , located on possibly the finest piece of real estate in the city - a big, triangular peninsula on the edge of downtown. We spent a leisurely afternoon strolling the water’s-edge boardwalk at the deserted tip of the park - basically just bouncing from bench to bench. Soenke took unusual pleasure in observing the activities of nearby sea planes: “look babe, that one is taxiing for take-off”; “look babe, here comes the approach”; “look babe, check out that landing”; “look babe, there’s another one taxiing”. And so on. Don’t get me wrong - I wasn’t complaining - we were sitting on the most well-situated bench in the park, with a view over the water of the Hong-Kong-like Vancouver downtown, plus a view of snow-capped Whistler Mountain and other interesting stuff. To top it all off, Sophie was quiet. I was in vacation heaven.

In particular, I enjoyed Stanley Park’s selection of totem poles, native to British Columbia. I am somewhat astonished that I managed to leave without any photos, because they were truly spectacular.

A major highlight of our trip to Vancouver was FINALLY MEETING MY FRIEND MARNIE. Marnie is especially known in our home for a delightful pre-baby package she sent which included - among other juicy things from my fave Lush store - a soothing lavender “pregnancy” spray (or something to that effect), which Soenke believed was to be used while I was in labor. In the middle of an especially painful contraction, he believed that he would vigorously spray me with this little bottle full of fragrant liquid, and magically the pain would subside. I applauded him on his willingness to consider alternative pain-relief methods to, say, an epidural, however we left the atomiser at home on May 22, 2007.

So, Marnie met us at our hotel with a very revved-up Sophie on hand, and deftly navigated us a mere 100 meters down the street to a cool “aqua bus”, which whisked us across shimmering waters and under a very modern bridge to a neighborhood of hip bars and restaurants. Thankfully, her chosen restaurant fully understood the danger of “revved up” babies, and served us a fabulous fish ensemble (and some awesome B.C. wine) in record time, before the meltdown occurred. Interestingly, on the aqua bus back, Marnie handed me a single Canadian dollar coin - informing me it was called a “Loonie”- which came in INCREDIBLY handy the next day when we needed some coinage for a parking meter (we had never bothered to change US dollars into Canadian… bad lazy travelers!).

In addition to a visit to Vancouver’s famous aquarium, we enjoyed a few laps up and down the famous Robson shopping street and a notable stroll through the world’s most AWESOME health food grocery store (called “Capers”). It was a quick trip, but well worth it.

Photos follow:

At the beach in Vancouver:

We wondered about all the feminine men around this beach, but then we understood:

What the heck is “busking” ???

Off to the Vancouver Aquarium!

And a small video of Sophie not paying the slightest attention to dolphins swimming just behind her:

The city of Vancouver itself (photo courtesy of Marnie, who has an awesome camera)

Marnie and I check out the aqua bus:

Marnie’s artsy shot (that’s what we call manual focus issues… easily cured with some sepia tone ):

Marnie’s very cool arsty shot, sans user problems:

And finally, here we flee the fine country of Canada at a veritable snail’s pace… in line at the U.S. border en route to our next adventure!…

Unfortunately I managed to lose an entire day of downtown photos from Victoria, but I do have all of our Butchart Gardens shots.

For those not familiar with the spectacular Butchart Gardens, they are 55 acres of pure OOOH-LA-LAAAA! Their location was originally the site of a limestone quarry and cement factory owned by Mr. Butchart, but once the limestone was all gone, his smart-thinking wife filled in the quarry with topsoil and started planting flowers. Over the years, the gardens were expanded and became ever more lavish. Today the Gardens are a Canadian National Historic Site, and have over 700 varieties of plants and flowers displayed during the year. They also have tasty places to eat and a fabu gift shop!

From what I could glean, Sophie’s favorite part of the gardens were the wide-open lawns, where she was freed from her stroller prison to chase butterflies and eat grass. I personally enjoyed getting trapped under the trees in the Japanese gardens when a surprise shower hit. The gardens have buckets of umbrellas stashed all over the gardens, so you are never wet for long.

It was here in the gardens that I really began to unwind on our roadtrip….

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Photos:

Sophie charms us with her “mommy, why did you wake me up so early” supercrank face the morning of our garden excursion:

View of the Butchart Gardens:

I recognize that I look completely ridiculous with both this hairstyle and this hat, but….

Soenke shelters our girl during a brief shower: