The Taelemans´ Blog

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.

Point Atkinson

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:

Practicing my face painting skills

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:

Galaxyland

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.

Ryan Kesler, Vancouver Canucks (Ine her favorite player)

Canucks Score!!

Group hug! (Very manly though)

GM Place Jumbotron

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.

Giants Vs Chiefs Fight

PNE Minitron (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…).

Huge seaweed, Pacific Rim

A view on the Pacific Ocean in Pacific Rim National Park, BC

St. Aidan On-the-Hill in Ucluelet

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.