Vancouver; Soggy Jewel of Canada

After Vancouver Island we decided to check out the Space Center and Astronomy Tower and jumped on a bus at a stop I found in my rambles. Alas it wasn't so simple, 3 buses later and few wrong turns we made it across the bridge and found out it was closed on Mondays (and it was getting later and dark by then). So we had hot drinks at Starbucks (of course), Mum tried some mulled apple juice and we made our way back. Unfortunately the toys the kids had gotten at the bug zoo were lost on this excursion. Blythe had a squishy worm; Devlin had a large life like tarantula.. which he left under a seat on the bus; I'd love to see how it gets discovered! XD


Mum kindly took the kids home from the bus stop and I got unleashed to shop! shop shop!! I bought some shoes, naturally, and looked in every shop for cheap kids snow boots. Picked up some bubble tea and ate the rest of the high tea cakes while finishing off my Christmas cards and postcards; I thought it would be fun to post them from Canada to my Aussie friends as a surprise :).


Vancouver Island and then this trip really took it out of Mum so she had a good opportunity to rest up for a few days before we had our big Rocky Mountain adventure. So the kids and I purchased a two day pass on the Tourist Trolley Bus (tram) which you could hop on and off on its loop around the city all day long. The tour guides were very informative, even apart from the travel convenience it was worth it just for the guides.


We got instructions from our driver and hopped off in Chinatown, feeling brave as we'd heard it was a dangerous place with the druggies and homeless, and caught a skyrail to Science World which was thronged with school groups. It was well worth it with heaps of hands on activities and games and areas with different themes. It was also very informative for those inclined to read the info, which meant mostly adults :p. The best part were the live performances they held every hour or two which were performed by a different grad student/volunteer who would give it on different properties - we caught the end of a turbulence/air/smoke show and saw the bubble/soap film show.

This contraption was just awesome, it released balls from the top which would be randomly pushed, dropped, scooped down, around, onto chimes, drums, xylophone, etc; it was perpetually in motion and sound.
Cameras showed how you would look with a symmetrical face = two lefts or two right sides, goes to show asymmetry is beautiful. (not showing you mine :P)
With all our layers and bags on Blythe was the weight of a giant octopus, Devlin a wolverine and I a komodo dragon.
The performer encased (albeit briefly) people in giant bubbles!

We learnt about pollution and green impact; about push and pull, pulleys and weight; about light and sound and movement; about asymmetry, Canadian animals and various physics and visual illusion. Blythe went for a lone exploration and when I found her I was not impressed which dampened the playtime fun somewhat and because I wasn't sure when the trams would finish running I was worried and rushing; which was a huge shame because it was the perfect place to let the kids loose to have some fun.


When we caught a train back I got the instructions wrong anyway and after getting off at the wrong stop we ended at the top of Robson street with no bus in sight. Being me I thought, no worries, we'll just walk and the kids were very stoical, especially after being fed. We bought some kids snow boots on the way back too!


The next day, back on the trolley, we went through Stanley Park, saw a canon that fires at 9pm sharp every night, a statue to a runner, the Olympic rings barge, the girl in a wetsuit statue and the Lionsgate Bridge. We saw a tree you could fit a small car into and part of the devastation caused in 2006 ( 45 hectares leveled in hours!) - they left an area unrestored as a reminder and to allow the natural process of recovery.

Canada's Olympic symbol.
The most popular beach, Second beach, used to have benches but they kept mysteriously disappearing at night. To save expense and to stop furnishing peoples lawns the council replaced the benches with these mammoth logs... they're still there :).
There's a kids water play park including a kids dryer!
Snapshot of some of the devastation.

We saw a lot of squirrels which was very exciting, I mean.. we've never seen them before and Dev was saying "squirrel!" every time, so I agree this would get a bit annoying! But our second driver took his job very seriously and asked me to keep my kids under control. I understand his annoyance, but considering the continuous changes with sleep, food, environment, weather and comfort I was very very proud of my kids, they were real champions, they were very well behaved.

Best shot I could get of the totems; there are 7 (?) to represent each of the First Nations Tribes.
An eagle's nest, they're massive!
Girl in a wetsuit which gets decorated with lingerie annually by college students.
Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel!

We went to Granville Island today and headed to the Kids Market first. As it was our last day in Vancouver I was hoping to knock over a bunch of things by getting on and off the tram. The Kids Market was a 2 storey building filled with kid shops; there were dress ups, clothes and shoes, raincoats and boots and coats (a whole shop just for those - only in Canada!), scrapbooking, photographing, a climbing maze of tubes and ball pit, an arcade, a cafe, jewellery, baby clothes and accessories, toys toys and toys - wooden toys, dolls, board games, building sets, science sets, stuffed animals, puppets, you name it!! The kids got to pick one thing each that would the the toy I'd buy them for the trip. Dev got a stretchy bus as long as his arm and Blythe got a plush pony that made galloping sounds.

The kids had a play in the maze (which was called Adventureland heh) while I did some important stamp shopping ;). Then we went on the hunt for a silk shop I thought would be a good candidate for shirt shopping for my brother (he'd asked me to keep an eye out for work shirts since Vancouver is the place to shop!). No luck there, but we did find genuine french chocolate filled croissants and comforted ourselves with those ;). An important discovery was some waterproof shoes I liked! They were gumboots with koi fish (which I wore for the rest of the trip.. forget that they had no insulation at all lol and my feet froze, I looked good freezing ;)).

Home, sweet home. There's a lot of homeless in Vancouver, being the warmest city in Canada. The chair quotes "retired, and working part time as a know-it-all" :).

We went up and down the streets vainly looking for this silk shop and missed out on touristing, I looked up the tram times worriedly and there was one due in 10 mins, the stop was 15 mins away; we RAN. Me dragging a crying 5 year old, lol, oh what a sad scene we reached a street length away and saw the tram pulling away. "Wait!" lol, waving frantically and running, the fellow kindly stopped and waited while we huffed through the door and collapsed. It was our helpful and friendly first tram driver who told us we were looking at the wrong time table and there were no trams after this one.. it was the last!!
Since it was the last it terminated in Gastown so we could walk (ahahahahaha), catch a taxi for $30 or he volunteered to drive us to our door in his spare time for $5, what a guy!
Unfortunately I'd run out of money, lol, so I gave him $5 and what I could scrounge of all my change for a tip (hopefully close to $5).

Blurry Chinatown lamp. Rice World! Every Chinatown must have one.
Friendly French fellow with a gazillion pretty dogs.
Blythe driving the Trolley Bus.
Inside the Trolley.

We arrived in time to chat to Mark on the phone, he'd tracked us down, he also roused on me for letting Mum get out of bed at all and diagnosed her with swine flu.

We had to pack, book out and I wanted to exchange Blythe's snow boots for ones with grip, shirt shop for Mark and grab us dinner! I achieved all of this in time (albeit with more running), found exactly the shirts I imagined in the 8th shop (the girl at the counter - in Guess - checked me out in simmering malice, lol!! how dare I shop there with no makeup, hair a mess, gumboots and flaky raincoat! XD).

Caught a taxi to the train station and found my bag was 10kg too heavy.. hmm too many shoes, woops. Mums was exactly 10kg light :), so after Mum bribed the counter lady with tim tams ;) we got a golf cart escort to the Pacific sleeper at 7:30pm, ate cold dinner, tucked kids in and got to sleep in my own bed without a kid shawl for the first time that week!

Next post: Adventure through the Rockies!!