It’s been an adventurous start to the trip for Melissa, Gill, and Karen! Unfortunately for me, while they’ve been out exploring Vancouver, I’ve been working, but I am now officially on vacation! The trip had a bit of rocky start – Gill and Mel got detained in Montreal for several hours on their way here and as a a result of having to get up at 4am (11:30pm PST), they were exhausted (and starving) when they finally arrived in Vancouver 14 hours later.

There was no time for rest though as we had already purchased tickets to see the Shrek Musical outside at Theatre Under The Stars in Stanley Park! In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best idea to go see a show the same day everyone arrived, but we were optimistic about it! Even the rain couldn’t dampen our spirits as we made our way to the Park and at first we viewed the free poncho’s that were provided for the show as a novelty. But as the show started, the drizzle turned to rain, and the rain turned to heavy rain and before we knew it, it was pouring! The musical was quite good, but I can’t lie, watching anything in the pouring rain is pretty miserable. When we heard the sound of distant thunder just before intermission, we decided we’d had enough. We grabbed our free hot chocolates and decided to head for home.

Fortunately, the second day in Vancouver was a huge improvement over the first and included a visit to the Vancouver Aquarium, a bike ride in Stanley Park, a walk around the downtown waterfront, and shopping on Granville Street and Granville Island! The group started the day with the Aquarium, which everyone enjoyed, but thus far it seems Gill and Mel have been plagued by whiny children. They were forced to tolerate a screaming child kicking the back of their seats on their 6 hour flight to Vancouver and then at the Aquarium they had to navigate the hoards of children’s camps that frequent the Aquarium in the summer. Although an educational summer camp on marine life might benefit Gill who mistakenly refers to the porpoises at the Aquarium as “portopussies”!

After a disappointing lunch of “creamy” spinach soup (it was so terrible I was forced to listen to a detailed description of just how awful it was), the day picked up with a bike ride through Stanley Park along the seawall. I’m told this was the highlight of the day and everyone was enamoured of their bright green rental bikes! The photos are courtesy of Melissa’s instagram account, but judging by Karen’s ability to text and ride in these photos, we think she might be after Mel’s title of social media guru and internet junkie!

The day continued with a trip to the waterfront in downtown Vancouver where you can take pictures with the Olympic Cauldron and this giant pixilated whale of a piece of art! I finally joined up with everyone at Granville Island and we did a little bit more exploring before heading back to my house for an earlier night. Since we won’t be together for our birthdays this year, we had a little birthday celebration to finish off the night!

But the real treat for this blog post is the youtube video below! Gill has been hard at work capturing our trip in video format – you should really be impressed because she editted this entire video on her iPhone! Enjoy!