Edmonton to Vancouver

Hello everyone :)

 

On Sunday we left Edmonton and flew to Vancouver. The flight was only about an hour and 20 minutes, and because of the time difference between British Columbia and Alberta, we gained an hour. Once in Vancouver, we caught the Skytrain to downtown then walked to our hotel. I was starving (and it was making me grumpy) so we walked around the downtown area near our hotel and went to Cafe Crepe and had savoury crepes which were so nice. I also had a nutella milkshake, which was so good! We strolled along Robson St, which is the main shopping and restaurant street in downtown Vancouver, before heading back to our hotel. We had a box of Lindt chocolates waiting for us when we got back, left by the hotel's management. We felt very loved :) I think our holiday had caught up to us and we were feeling pretty tired. Instead of exploring, we lazed around the hotel and read our kindles (Mum now has a kindle too. She got it at West Edmonton Mall. We're now a kindle family!). We went out for dinner at a restaurant called Joey's (I know, I thought of Joey from the TV show 'Friends', too!). Mum and Dad's dinners were really nice, but mine was a bit disappointing. However, the restaurant certainly did make up for it with it's desserts. We all shared a molten lava chocolate souffle, and an open apple pie with caramel sauce and maple ice cream. Both were heavenly :) In this hotel Mum and Dad have a king sized bed, and I'm on the sofa bed which is so springy and creaky and basically horrible. Mum's hoping it makes me realise how much better my single bed on campus will be.

 

Yesterday I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal for breakfast, yum. We relaxed for a bit in the morning, then walked down to the fountain outside of the Vancouver Art Gallery to meet with our tour guide.

 

 

 

We went with the company Tour Guys who run free walking tours (tips are encouraged highly though, but well deserved). We did a downtown and waterfront tour, and there was about 25-30 people on the tour. Our tour guide's name was Lauren and she was about 21. I had a chance to talk to her and she has just finished up studying at UBC, so she was giving me lots of tips and answering all my questions. She also gave me her email address so I could keep in touch if I had more questions :) The tour was really great, and we heard lots of interesting facts. We saw the fancy Hotel Vancouver:

 

 

We also saw the Christ Church Cathedral, the oldest church in Vancouver. There was also some really interesting public sculptures like this swinging pendulum:

 

 

It actually swings, it's crazy. And this sculpture which moves and mimics the elevators inside of the building:

 

 

We saw the Marine Building and had the chance to go inside. It has some really impressive marine themed architecture on both the inside and outside of the building.

 

 

We reached the waterfront and saw Canada Place, which is where all the cruise ships dock.

 

 

Our tour ended at the Olympic Cauldron which was built for the 2010 Winter Olympics.

 

 

The waterfront view was really pretty :)

 

 

The tour ended and we stayed around at the waterfront for awhile taking photos. We found this sculpture called Digi Orca

 

 

We walked back to the Vancouver Art Gallery to start our Eat Your Cart Out tour. Our tour was much smaller this time, just us, the tour guide, and an elderly couple from Florida. Vancouver is known for it's food carts/trucks so our tour let us sample them! We started at the food truck called Feastro and got to sample a BBQ pulled pork taco and a watermelon mint lemonade which were both really good.

 

 

 

We got to walk through the Hotel Vancouver that we saw the outside of during the first tour. Our tour guide, Leni, told us that this hotel is one of the most pet-friendly. The even have a room service menu for pets! The hotel also owns two golden retrievers, Mavis and Beau. If you stay in the hotel and can't bring your own pet, you can look after them and take them for walks. When we walked through the hotel we got to see them! They were so adorable. I got to pat Mavis :)

 

 

Our next stop was Japadog, which is the most popular foodcart in Vancouver. It serves Japanese style hotdogs. The sample we tried had japanese mayonaise and seaweed on it. It actually tasted really nice.

 

 

We then stopped at Kaboom Box, and got hot smoked salmon sandwiches. Salmon is a specialty dish here in British Columbia. It was really nice

 

 

Our last stop was Mom's Grilled Cheese where we had a sample of the meatloaf grilled cheese sandwich. It was so good, the highlight of the day for me!

 

 

We were so full after the tour. It was so good to be able to get a small sample of everything. We then headed back to our hotel, freshened up, and went shopping down Robson St. We bought a couple of things, then came back and relaxed in the hotel for awhile. For dinner, we went to a quick and easy Japanese restaurant close to our hotel.

 

More blogging to come :)

 

Love,

Emily