A visit to/from Down Under

On Thursday night, we met up with some familiar faces from my childhood in Dalby! Kent and Elwyn were passing through Vancouver en route to embarking on a 7-day Alaska cruise as part of a 3-month trip around North America, so we took them out for... some good old Aussie food!!

Here we are enjoying our generous mains at Moose's Down Under: salmon burger for Ben; Aussie burger (with egg, beetroot and pineapple - and chicken salt on the chips!) for me; "Gold Coast Chicken" for Elwyn; and shepherd's pie for Kent...


It had been 1.5 years since we last went to Moose's, but now that we've tasted their huge, delicious, melts-in-your-mouth pavlova, I think we'll be returning a lot sooner next time!


With the moose...


After dinner, we took Kent and Elwyn down to the waterfront to check out the Olympic Cauldron from last year's Winter Olympics...



...And the "Digital Orca" sculpture beside the Vancouver Convention Centre...


...And then we spent a while chatting with them in their room on the 19th floor of the Hyatt.

It was so nice to catch up with them and hear all about their travels... and, as always, we love hearing some fair dinkum Aussie accents over here!

VSO concert in Stanley Park

On Sunday evening, July 10th, we went to a free outdoor concert by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) at Brockton Oval in Stanley Park. The concert was part of the 3-day Summer Live Festival, which was part of Vancouver's year-long 125th birthday celebrations!

Juanita, Ben and I took the Skytrain in to Waterfront Station. Then, because the line-up for the free shuttle bus was so long, we walked the 45 minutes to Brockton Point... picnic supplies in hand! It was a stunningly picturesque walk along the waterfront, past sea planes, fancy yachts, and Vancouver's swishest hotels. I couldn't believe I'd never been to that part of Vancouver on foot before. It certainly reinforced why the words "Vancouver" and "beautiful" are so often found in the same sentence!

This is the cauldron from the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. We'd never seen this in person before!


Sea planes with North Vancouver in the background...



Sights along the seawall...





Into Stanley Park...




We saw a raccoon on the path just before I took the photo below, but it didn't hang around long enough to pose for me!




First glimpse of the VSO concert... we arrived just as the first song was ending...



We found ourselves a picnic spot, settled in, and soon saw some more of our friends sitting about 15 metres in front of us (we had already known they were somewhere at the concert!). Then it was just a matter of sitting back, digging in, and listening to awesome music for the next hour!










The concert finished with Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. Here's a video of the first few minutes and one of the last few minutes (16 cannon shots included!)...

This is the view from Stanley Park of Vancouver's one and only wind turbine (The Eye of the Wind), up on Grouse Mountain. It's fully functional, but it's also one of Vancouver's newest tourist attractions, which you can tour for $20!


The rest of our friends left after the VSO concert, but Juanita, Ben and I stayed to hear the next act: Spirit of the West, a famous Canadian folk rock band that has been around since 1983 (but which Ben and I heard of for the first time this same evening!). They were very good, and the lead singer had amazing stage energy, but the VSO was still the highlight!





The crowd configuration changed somewhat as the evening went on. Once the smell of wafting marijuana smoke became too overpowering (which I think was near the end of the concert anyway!), we packed up and started the 45 minute walk back to the Skytrain.

It was a great evening, and a very enjoyable way to celebrate our city's 125th birthday. Thanks, Vancouver!

Canada Day

Yesterday - Friday, July 1st - was a public holiday for Canada Day. This year was the 144th anniversary of the day when three British colonies became Canada.

Around 4pm, we met up with Gerard, Janelle and Claire, and headed to John Lawson Park in West Vancouver - picnic dinner in hand. We parked at a cute shopping area called Park Royal, which we'd never heard of before but definitely want to go back and explore sometime!

After walking about 1km from the shopping district to the park, we settled in to enjoy our roast chicken, salad, cupcakes, and live entertainment by local bands. At one stage the Rocky Mountaineer even came chugging past right beside the park, and the passengers were lined up at the windows, waving to us and brandishing Canadian flags. That was fun to see!


















At 8pm we went to Stuart and Rosanne's place in North Vancouver to hang out with them and their other guests until the fireworks at 10:30pm. They were hoping to have a great view of the fireworks from their balcony, but there turned out to be a tree and a power pole in the way!



Happy Canada Day!