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Vancouver



While we were in Seattle, we took a side trip to Vancouver, Canada.  We’ve heard really amazing reviews  from other people, but haven’t been ourselves until now.  

It was an interesting trip, and really glad we went but Seattle was definitely more appealing to us. 
In Vancouver, we stayed at Holiday Inn about 20 minutes outside of city center; it had an inside pool, Subway right outside and free breakfast – what more can you ask for :)  We tried to do some Vancouver specific sightseeing and opted to skip “old dusty church” but visited the Granville Island which is a huge public market and Stanley Park where boys got to run on the rocky beach and throw sticks in the water amongst other things.

Vancouver view from Granville Island



Stanley Island, Vancouver behind


Team work!

Always in action
 The one thing that was absolutely horrible and the waste of money was the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Classical Chinese Garten.  The location of it is far from the best, and that should have been our first clue but noooo … we are persistent.  We parked our car and started walking towards the garden.  Realizing that everybody is hungry and stopped by an authentic Chinese place that was packed with people.  Well, authentic Chinese food is not something that we came to appreciate – it was horrible!  Afterwards we stop by Starbucks because we NEEDED something better tasting and continued our way to the garden.  We had to go through a little park and half-jokingly Chris tells the boys not to pick up any needles because we are really in that kind of part of town.  Anton, being a good listener that he is, picks up a syringe instead!  Back to the garden – tiny, expensive, nothing to see AT ALL.  We got it covered in less than 10 minutes and thinking we missed something, we actually asked the guy at the front gate and nope, it’s really that small.
Entire garden is in this picture

This is outside of the paid section
Capilano Suspension Bridge was awesome yet mildly horrifying to those of us afraid of heights.  It’s a walking bridge that is 230 feet (70 meters) above the ground and 460 feet long (140 meters).  It is a beautiful scenery but the bridge is suspended therefore it shakes under you.  Ilya was brave, held his tears back and on the way back was much better – you have to cross the bridge to get to the park and then cross it again to get back. The park had a tree climbing adventure where there is a path that you follow on top of (kind of) the trees.  

View from the bridge


A bit narrow here :)

Tree top adventure
After that adventure we decided to head to the Grouse Mountain; it still had snow on the ground and people were skiing.  I did overhear people on the lift that skiing season is coming to an end – well, it’ is April people!  We had lunch at the top and it is not often that you actually see salmon on kids menus so I was impressed.   Unfortunately, we did not pack enough snow clothing so we skipped the sledding there (I forgot to mention that Knorr men, minus the cousin, went snow-tubing outside of Seattle and loved it! It was a beautiful sunny day and when I was getting the boys dressed, I seriously layered them with tights, undershirts, sweaters, scarfs, you name it … From what I heard they got undressed pretty quickly from all the running around).

View of the Vancouver, a bit hazy but shows how high we went


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