A day in Vancouver!

John and I really enjoyed our day trip from Squamish to Vancouver over the summer holiday.  The weather was perfect and we had our great friends Will and Angela as tour guides!

If anyone has only 1 day in Vancouver like us, I'd recommend one site in particular which you can spend hours upon hours at:  Stanley Park!

Stanley Park is HUGE.  It is 1001 acres of land.  In 2014 TripAdvisor named it the top park in the WORLD.  There are tons of huge trees there and some lovely walking paths.  We had a picnic in the park and enjoyed a fun game of bocce ball.  There were lots of families there enjoying the beautiful summer day.  This place is a great spot that is not to be missed!

Stanley Park is also home to the famous Vancouver Seawall which is also HUGE.  The Seawall was built around Stanley Park to help prevent erosion, but is a popular place for bikers, joggers, roller bladers, and walkers.  The Seawall also passes by beaches, so it's easy to stop for a quick swim or to lay out on the sand and soak in the sun's rays.

The Seawall loop is around 9 km long.  The views are absolutely beautiful!  I was snapping photos around every corner.  While walking along the Seawall you get a great view of the Lions Gate Bridge and can even see Mount Washington in the distance.

Vancouver seems like a very active, clean city.  It was great to finally visit there.  I think it would be a fun place to live.  The only down side is the fact that Vancouver has the second most expensive housing market in the world after Hong Kong!  Ouch... I guess beauty comes with a price!

Gondolas galore!

British Columbia has no shortage of gondolas.  No, not the kind in Venice but the kind that takes you to the top of a mountain!  Over the summer holiday we went on two spectacular gondolas.  BC is really a beautiful place that every Canadian should visit at least once in their life.  Although it sometimes costs less to buy a ticket to Europe, BC is definitely worth the splurge.  We flew across the country, literally coast to coast (from PEI to BC), but were able to keep the cost within reason as part of our multi-city journey this summer.

The first gondola we went up this summer was in Squamish where Angela and Will live.  The Sea to Sky gondola is new and worth the cost of around $40.  At the top there is a suspension bridge you can cross, and there are some walking trails to follow so you can see some great viewpoints.

The second gondola we went on was the Peak 2 Peak Gondola in Whistler.  It links Whistler Mountain with Blackcomb Mountain and is around 4.4 km long.  Part of the ride is in an enclosed gondola cabin, and another part is on open-air chair lifts.  The cost was around $50.  The best part is the chair lift since you have an unobstructed view of the mountains around you.  Disclaimer:  if you are afraid of heights, this may not be the best attraction for you.  It's high.  Really, really high!  It really is amazing and one of the best tourist attractions I have ever been to.  At the top of the mountains are some hiking trails, but we did not have time to do them.  Sometimes you can see wildlife including bears while on the gondola, but all we saw at the top were some cute marmots.  Riding the Peak 2 Peak is a great activity for a clear summer day!

Great day for an "Aquaventure" !

Last week the UAE celebrated Eid al-Adha and we got two days off school.  Flights out of the city were quite expensive and even hotels within the country were either booked or charging high rates for the holiday.  We decided to stay in Dubai and relax by spending the day on The Palm - yes, that man-made island shaped like a palm tree!  On The Palm is a huge resort called Atlantis.  Although we did not stay at the hotel, we spent one full day with our friends at the huge water park next door which was called Aquaventure.  On their website they claim to be the #1 water park in the Middle East and Europe.  If you are a resident of the UAE you can get a big discount by showing a piece of civil ID.  I did not take this photo (it's from the booking.com website) but it gives you an idea of what the Atlantis hotel and The Palm island looks like.  In the background the skyline is Dubai Marina, and on the far left you can sort of make out the Burj Khalifa and downtown Dubai.

Despite buying our tickets online in advance, we still had to wait over one hour to receive our wristbands needed for entry.  Luckily the lines at the water slides weren't too long and it was pretty easy to get a raft for the "Lazy River" floating around the park.  The Lazy River wasn't so lazy though, as it had rapids in certain sections and a "Torrent" section with large waves.  John wasn't expecting such a large wave to wash over his tube, and he ended up flipping over!

Aquaventure is right on the beach so you can also swim in the Persian Gulf waters which are very warm and calm.  From the beach there is a great view of Dubai Marina, the monorail connecting Atlantis to the rest of The Palm island, and in the distance you can see Jumeirah Beach, Burj Al Arab (sailboat-shaped building), and the Burj Khalifa downtown.

We brought our GoPro camera to Aquaventure to take some pics and video.  Aquaventure was a lot of fun and we definitely want to go back!

Where the heck is Warnemunde?

One of the last stops of our Baltic cruise was Warnemunde.  If you're wondering where that is (because I sure was!) it's a small district part of the town of Rostock in northern Germany.  I just Googled the population and it was only 8441.  We almost didn't get off the ship at this stop (just like in Kiel) because we had been to a bunch of German cities before and wanted to enjoy life on board the ship while it was in port.  Many people from the ship got off at this port and then headed by train or bus to Berlin which was several hours away.  We just visited Berlin last Christmas vacation so we didn't feel the need to make the long trip there again so soon.  I'll admit that we spent most of our time in Warnemunde at McDonald's using the free wifi, but we did walk around this cute little town to take a few pics and buy some souvenirs.  Most of the restaurants and shops were lined up along the canal going through the town, and there was even a decent beach there, although we decided not to go since the day was quite overcast and rainy.  Despite the weather, Warnemunde was a delightful place to spend an afternoon!

Two summer days in Stockholm

Stockholm, Sweden was another great destination on our Baltic cruise.  The weather was perfect and it was a nice walk from the ship straight into the Old Town (Gamla Stan).

We decided to spend our first day in Stockholm doing a free walking tour of Gamla Stan.  Unlike other Old Towns we have come across in Europe, Stockholm's was quite hilly.  Some of the cobblestone roads were a bit steep!  On our walking tour we came across the Swedish parliament buildings, the city hall where they pass out Nobel Peace Prizes every year, and a lot of grand statues of the many King Gustavs that have ruled Sweden.  Prior to the tour we sat in the square and just people-watched.  Sometimes it's nice just to do nothing but observe a foreign city over a cold drink!

Our second day in Stockholm was spent taking a small ferry boat from the Old Town to Djurgarden (an island 10 minutes away).  This island is home to Grona Lund, an amusement park which we could see from our cruise ship.  We didn't end up going there since I was hoping to visit the Tivoli Gardens amusement park in Copenhagen (which we did a few days later).

On Djurgarden we made our way to Skansen, the first "open-air museum" in Sweden.  Skansen is basically a museum/zoo spread out over a large area.  They have a replica of a 19th century village, but to be honest we didn't feel like doing the historic tour.  We just wanted to see the animals!  They had a variety of Scandinavian animals such as bears, moose, reindeer, seals, and bison.  The ones we enjoyed watching the most were the seals and the bears.  The seals were so fast swimming underwater, and one just sunbathed while perched on a rock.  The bears were play fighting and chasing each other around.  Skansen also has a lovely rose garden overlooking the city.

On our walk back to the ship we had some great views of the skyline.  Stockholm was very lively in the summer with many tourists and a cultural festival going on.  Another cool city visited on our trip!