The weather has cooled down a bit (quite a bit actually, from 40C to 23C) during the last couple of days, which makes life a bit more enjoyable for Belgians 
Even the deer were seeking shade and didn’t seem to bother if you approached them. This picture is not cropped and my zoom lens was not even zoomed in to the max (the EXIF says 135mm).
Sorry for the recent lack of updates but we had some busy weeks and more coming up. My parents came over to visit us for 3 weeks (too short) and we had a great time wine tasting, doing hikes, …
Here is a picture of my lovely mother in Vancouver:
We also did a short day trip to Whistler where we visited the Olympic skijump and biathlon area. At the Biathlon shooting range you could try out a biathlon rifle and shoot at the targets. Ine beat me with a perfect 5/5 score against my less perfect 4/5. I had a bad bullet… On our way we saw 2 bears (see previous post for picture). We ended the day with a very nice dinner at the Rimrock Cafe.
Below are two more shots from the previous weeks, I still have a huge backlog to process and I’ll try to post some more soon.
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:).
Like I’ve told you before, my parents made it for Christmas.
They were stuck in Toronto for 24 hours, but luckily they were able to catch the first flight, on Tuesday morning, to Vancouver.
As you can expect, they were very tired, but they had to keep going until the evening because otherwise they would give in to their jet lag. I decided to take them out to visit some furniture shops because if we wanted to enjoy our Christmas dinner, we needed some dinning chairs.
On the 24th we prepared our Christmas dinner and of course ate it. After dinner we went for an evening/Christmas Eve walk. Kris wanted to take some pictures of the huge Christmas tree in Port Moody.
On Christmas day we went to Whistler. Our first stop was Brackendale: Winter home of the bald eagle. I think we’ve seen enough bald eagles for the rest of the year (but we’re going back with some friends in January, on the day they count the bald eagles). We did quite a long hike to the perfect viewing spot near the river. Because there was a lot of snow it took us a while to get there, but it was definitely worth it!!
After the hike we proceeded our trip to Whistler. We had to be there in time for our Nicklause North Sleigh ride and Fondue Dinner.
A beautiful 30-35 minute ride through wooded trails beside Green Lake before returning to the Den Restaurant at Nicklause North Golf Course for a four course gourmet fondue dinner (including an appetizer, cheese fondue, Chinois fondue and finishing with their chocolate fondue for dessert.)
It was a wonderful white Christmas day with an amazing dinner. We all ate waaaaay too much, but we really enjoyed it!
Normally we were going to Grouse Mountain today, but it was snowing again, so we decided that it wasn’t worth going up, because the mist would block the view.
So instead of going up the mountain we went downtown. We’ve visited Gastown (it is a tourist attraction, but they have a few nice souvenir shops though…). We had lunch in the Old Spaghetti Factory. The restaurant is special because it is decorated in a nostalgic theme using genuine antiques, stained glass, Tiffany type lights, and an authentic trolley car (in which we were seated). Which was rather nice!
Still on our agenda:
- Tomorrow we go snowshoeing (on Cypress, Grouse or Seymour, not sure which one to choose). Doing some exercises will be good to get rid of the extra weight we gained because of the dinners we had the last few days.
- On Sunday we will probably take the ferry and go to Victoria and the Royal British Columbia Museum.
- Visit Canyon lights
- Bright night at Stanley Park and the Vancouver Aquarium
- Downtown
- Metrotown
- …
I think we could say we have a very busy agenda. I hope the weather allows us to do all these things, because it keeps on snowing, which makes it hard to visit everything:)
Below some pictures of the last few days.
Some kids building an igloo in front of our apartment
And last but not least, our sleigh ride in Whistler.
Our Saturday mission: Find clothes for the red carpet event. We succeeded and as a reward we went to the Vancouver Aquarium. But first things first.
So we went to Metrotown on Saturday and we both didn’t know what to get (but you already knew that). Surprise, Surprise, Kris talked me in to buying a cocktail dress. So I’ve bought a black cocktail dress. Perfect match with my new shoes.
Kris decided to wear a black suit, and he bought himself a nice looking shirt, tie and belt.
Pictures will follow on Friday (because then we have to go to the event).
So after too many hours of shopping we decided we’d reward ourselves with a visit to the Vancouver Aquarium.
Today was a sunny day in Port Moody. Since we could only go to Fright Night at 6pm we decided to take a walk. There is a trail that starts not far from our apartment. It’s a rather short one, but definitely worth doing.
It’s a trail along the the bay and the path you are walking on, is a wooden path, so you feel like you are walking in the “Hoge Venen” (at least I felt like that:))
We were standing on some kind of platform and watching the shoreline and then suddenly somebody said: look there are some bear paws next to the water. So since it was still low water it meant that the bear had probably visited this spot early this morning (the footprint wasn’t washed away and it’s high water around 4pm).
If you click on the pictures you will be able to see them a little bit bigger and you will be able to see the paw. On the second picture you can find the paw in the shadow of the pole. Just underneath the small rock.
Today we took the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler. Except for the Icefield Parkway, I think one of the most beautiful roads I’ve ever drove on.
A lot of construction works along the road (because of the winter Olympics in 2010), but still a nice scenic drive.
Today we’ve visited Grouse Mountain. The two main reasons of our visit:
- It’s our home snowboard resort (for next winter)
- It has a grizzly bear habitat ( wiiiii)
We drove up to North Vancouver and took the skyride to the top of Grouse Mountain.
The first show we saw was the lumberjack show. Pretty funny show with two lumberjacks competing against each other.
Checklist from this morning:
- patch that helps against seasickness
- sunscreen
- camera
- lunch pack
Although I really hate water and I get sick at see it was really worth it!
This morning we had to be on Granville Island to take the pod pilot for our whale watching trip.
Wild Whales Vancouver offered us a protective suit (which we really needed) and the guided us to our boat “the pod pilot”. We left Granville Island, direction Vancouver Island. After a bumpy ride we circled around the different islands near Vancouver Island. We didn’t see any whale for a while until suddenly our captain received a call from one of the other whale watching boats. A killer whale was spotted near Pender Island. The pod pilot rushed to the spotting place and suddenly out of nothing a fin of an orca came to the surface.
Mister Pender aka T14 decided to join us. Pender is a transient whale (whales also known as mammal hunters who travel between California and Alaska).
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Just a quick post to inform you all that I won’t have a lot of time to post in the next weeks, but I’ll make it up to you later! I’ll leave you for now with a picture I took some time ago in Antwerp, Belgium, of a dog eating a lollipop…
Kris Taeleman | 
