A couple of pictures for you to enjoy! The bear picture was taken on Sunday, the other ones are a little bit older (you can tell because there is still snow on the mountains).
Credits go to Kris of course:).
The weather has been so nice lately that we really have been enjoying our outdoor time.
After a couple of weeks/months of consideration we’ve finally got ourselves a barbecue.
Check out our BBQ below:
No just kidding. I did like it though, but Kris didn’t really want me to get it. Especially because it was extremely expensive (not at all because of the pink).
Anyway, this is what we actually bought.
We tried it and we have to admit it’s definitely a wonderful thing! It’s way faster than our indoor stove…
We weren’t able to do many trip the last couple of days since I have been working, but last weekend was really cool! We had some friends visiting from Belgium (Jeroen and Joke).
We went Kayaking and it was fun! We saw seals and a bald eagle on our tour. We’ll definitely be doing more of that. Hopefully we can go on a five hour tour very soon!
We could not take Mister Grizzly because he wasn’t allowed to go into the water. He’s been neutered since a week and he’s walking around with this beautiful cone around his head. It’s really quite sad. But well, he’ll get over it!
This weekend we get some more visitors: Kris his parents.
So more about that later!
Last weekend, Kris’ sister and her boyfriend were here to visit us.
On Saturday we did some tourist things: We went to Granville Island, which is always nice because they have amazing pork sausage over there:). Besides that we also went too Gastown and we’ve visited an outlet center not too far from Vancouver. To end a sunny day, we drove to Buntzen Lake (Where Grizzly and I had our first outdoor “swim”. I would love to say that it was nice, but walking around in meltwater is just a tiny little bit too cold for my feet.)
On Sunday the weather was so nice that we decided to go to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. We were limited in doing a long hike, so we only did a short one to the viewpoint, Point Atkinson.
Because it was really hot we decided to go to the beach after our park visit. It was the first time for all of us to go there. It was extremely crowded, but we had tons of fun.
I actually went in the water with Grizzly (again). He used to be really afraid of it, so by going in together with him, I’m hoping to get him more familiar with swimming.
Because it was the last evening of Lieve and Thierry their visit, we decided once again to have a very tasteful dinner at Banana Leaf. It is a Malaysian Restaurant on Broadway.
Check out a couple of our pictures.
Grizzly watching the Vancouver skyline
Soaked
Lieve and Thierry
We will have some friends coming over next week so we will probably go kayaking with them and of course do some fun stuff. Apart from that I will have to work a couple of weekends next month, so unfortunately I won’t have too much time to think about blogging.
And something incredibly cool:
I am a volunteer for Bear Aware. They are organizing a Bear Aware Open House really soon, so I will also be helping at that event. Again, busy times coming up…
I will paint faces at the Bear Aware Open House:
I hope everybody is enjoying the sunshine! Enjoy your week!
Almost two weeks ago we decided we would go for another hike.
We read about the hike in our “109 walks in BC” book and it was described as a 12km hike around the Hayward resevoir.
We’ve done a lot of 10km hikes so we were pretty certain that the 12km wouldn’t be a problem.
We started walking and after a while we passed a sign. We already did 6km, only to find out that the walk around the lake was actually 17km instead of 12. If we wanted the 12km hike, we needed to go back to same way we came.
I was thinking that going back was probably the best thing to do since we didn’t have a lot of water or food with us (and then I haven’t even mentioned our 5 months old puppy).
Kris (of course) thought the 17km wouldn’t be a problem, “It’s only 5km more, and there aren’t too many hills in the neighbourhood”.
Guess what?:) The walk was going up and downhill pretty much all the time.
We actually succeeded in doing the hike in 4 hours, which is not that bad apparently… Our feet were sore, but I expected it to be worse. The only thing we need to remind ourselves when we leave for another hike: we need way more water!!
So the 17km wasn’t too bad.
This weekend was a long weekend because of Victoria Day. That’s the queen’s birthday. We went for a road trip.
We booked ourselves a hotel in Clinton, BC (almost the middle of nowhere). We decided to drive around in the Cariboo and do a small loop to see what BC had to offer us besides the already known parts.
It was really nice! Very special to acutally see a completly different climate in 300 km… We went from “almost rainforest” to “desert like climate.
And best part of everything: I’ve seen my first bear of the season!
The trip was definitely worth it!
Good thing Kris has kept you guys and girls company!
I’ve been away for a couple of days (for work), and I also had to work on weekends. Well not every weekend but I have been quite busy lately.
The trip to Alberta was pretty cool! It was a nice opportunity to meet some new people, to visit Edmonton and Calgary and to visit Olivier and Saar.
The cool thing about Edmonton was definitely the biggest mall in the world: West Ed Mall.
IMPRESSIVE! They have a golf course, water park, skating rink, pirate ship, roller coaster, … You name it, they’ve got it.
Basically: you could get lost, big time!
Besides that they also have an amazing amount of shops (of course). The best thing about all of this: taxes are less in Edmonton, so I actually had an excuse to shop!
After a couple of days in Edmonton, I drove to Calgary. The drive itself was pretty boring because prairie is pretty much the only thing you see.
In Calgary I had my first Red Lobster lunch (finally after all these months of waiting!). It was worth the wait though!
And besides all the fun things I had to work too of course. But it wasn’t bad at all, and even though it was work, I had a wonderful time out there!
It was good to be back home though! I’ve missed my three men! And I think Kris missed me too (he had to take care of everything, and get up early to take out the dog).
So good to back in BC. We are expecting some visitors next week, so it’s going to be busy again. We also have a long weekend coming up so we might end up going somewhere. Maybe Harrison Hot Springs, we’re no sure yet.
I do have some pictures of the mall, but they are taken with my mobile, and not really worth a lot… But anyway:
Small roller coaster
Humpback whale
Golf course
Pirate ship
Sea lions area
Skating rink
Ooh and we also got our patio furniture. Grizzly likes it, that’s for sure!
If I have to call out one thing I became addicted to since we moved to Vancouver, it’s gotta be Hockey. I’ve never been much of a sportsfan, but there is something about hockey which attracts me (and of course working on the best NHL game requires one to keep up to date and go out to research 
).
The Vancouver Canucks are doing great in the playoffs at this moment (knock on wood), they are currently 2-1 ahead in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Chicago Blackhawks. Go Canucks Go! On to the Stanley Cup
Here are various pictures of hockey matches I’ve been to in the last couple of weeks. The first set is from the Vancouver Canucks first round game against the St. Louis Blues whom they swept out of the playoffs with a massive 4-0 sweep.
The next pictures are taken at game seven of the second round of the WHL Playoffs against the Spokane Chiefs. They won, but lost the Western Conference final against the Kelowna Rockets.
(Compared to the GM Place one at least)We had a bit of a lazy Sunday, which created some time for me to do some photo filtering/processing. We had an early start due to a dog incident… (just spent 100$ on new blinds so we wouldn’t be woken up by the light anymore…), so we headed out for a 10K hike around Buntzen Lake, which is about 2-3km from our home and afterward we went for lunch at our favorite Sushi Place, where we treated ourselves to Spicy Tuna Sashimi, Spicy salmon sashimi, an “awesome roll” (it was actually very good, but that’s just the name) and Ebi Gyoza, price: 28$(+-18EUR) (including drinks). Can’t beat that price
We finished it of with a visit to Starbucks where I got a “Double chunky chocolate chip frappuccino” and Ine got something similar with strawberry (Basically these are more or less milkshakes, but starbucks likes to fancy up the names…).
That’s it for me for Tofino, I have plenty more, but that would just bore you all. I have so much stuff left to post I’ll just continue to go through them when I find some time.
Here are some more pictures from our trip to Ucluelet - Tofino - Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island.
It has been ages since we wrote something on the blog… Sorry about this!
We spend our Easter Weekend on Vancouver Island.
We left early on Friday morning to catch the ferry to Nanaimo. It took us some preparations to get everything ready especially with the dog, but we’ve made it in time!
It was a three hour drive northwest across Vancouver Island, from Nanaimo to Tofino along Highway 4.
It is a popular tourist destination. It attracts surfers, nature lovers, campers, whale watchers, fishermen, or anyone just looking to be close to nature. In the winter many people visit Tofino and the west coast to watch storms on the water.
Since everything was completely booked in Tofino we end up staying in Ucluelet. Which is situated about 25 km from Tofino.
We stayed in cabins, which was a really nice experience.
We did quite a few hikes in the Pacific Rim National Park . At first we were a bit disappointed because they seemed pretty short but that turned out quite ok. Most of them led from the rain forest to beaches.
Even though I was pretty afraid that we would encounter problems with Grizzly (since it was his first real trip) it turned out great. I was definitely worrying for nothing.
I think all of us had a really good time and it was a nice way to get Bert introduced to the Canadian way of life!
So we had a wonderful weekend. Hope you guys enjoyed it too. Check out some of our pictures.
I want to start this post by thanking two special people.
We came home about an hour ago and there was a box in front of our door and even more, it had my name on it!
Not knowing what to expect I ran upstairs with the box and opened it.
There it was, my own first “Martini set”
I was planning to buy myself a set for a while, because I really started appreciating Martini’s (and no, not only because of the “sex and the City cosmopolitan”). So I’m going to the liquor store very soon for all the ingredients.
Thanks Koen and Tanja! I love it!
Pleasant start of our week.
Not only did we have a nice start of our week, the previous one ended really good too!
On Saturday we’ve installed our new built-in microwave with vent (nothing really special for you guys, but we’re happy with it). Kris can finally make his beloved kettle corn again!
We’ve also bought our outdoor furniture (which we will have within two - three weeks). So let the summer begin!
On Sunday we went to Golden Ears National Park. I didn’t expect too much because it’s in a part of the Lower Mainland we don’t really know.
It was wonderful! We did the Golden Creek Trail, more or less 8 km. It would have been a normal, easy-going hike. But we ended climbing up and down a trail covered with 1,5m of snow. Grizzly loved it, but it became pretty exhausting after a while for Kris and me:).
We have a book which describes 109 walks in the Lower Mainland.
We always use it to prepare our walks and it wasn’t any different now. According to the book we could take a trail that led (from the Golden Creek Trail) to the Lower Falls Trail. It looked like a very nice path.
After a while (when we were already to far along to turn back) the path wasn’t really a path anymore. We ended up crawling our way down, because it was really steep, slippery and covered with trees that fell down because of winter storms.
Like I said, we were really tired at the end of the walk because the 8 km turned out to be quite a lot more (up and downhill). We were both happy to see our car again but it was definitely worth it!
Below some pictures of our walk.
The three of us
We have a lot coming up in the next couple of days. Tomorrow we are going to see the Canucks (playing against the Calgary Flames).
And on the weekend we are heading out to Tofino.
At the end of this month I’m going to Edmonton and Calgary (work related).
Really looking forward to everything!
Enjoy your week!
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Schoon ee die beaches met de skyline. Das toch wa Eef en ik ook gedaan hebben...
Ine | 
