Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We disembarked from the cruise early in the morning in Seattle. It was another beautiful day in the city, an excellent day to drive back to Canada. I didn’t think I would be so excited to go back north of the border, but it turns out I was. I think the ten days on the boat with the Americans really pushed me over the edge. I’m ready to be back ‘home’, even if it is 6000km from where we live.

I haven’t been to Vancouver since Liz and I ventured across the country in 2004, on what I still consider to be one of the most memorable trips I’ve been on. It’s certainly one of the funniest. I really enjoyed Vancouver then, and this time was no different.

We had a great spot in North Vancouver. It was a beautiful summer day in Vancouver so we spent our first afternoon at the beautiful park down the hill, grabbed a few local beers from the store and tuned into the Vancouver-Calgary hockey game. A real Canadian evening.

We had intended to go check out the Capilano suspension bridge, but got a great tip from our AirBnb to instead head to Lynn Canyon park where we could walk amongst an old growth forest with a suspension bridge, but for free instead of $200. It was perfect! The bridge wasn’t as big as Capilano, but still fun, there was a great little natural pool at the end of the trail that a bunch of people were swimming in – we could barely keep our feet in it was so cold, and amazing waterfalls at the other end of the trail.

Since we have had such a break from driving after the cruise, we felt up to a day trip from Vancouver. We spent Mother’s Day driving up the sea-to-sky highway to Whistler. It was an absolutely stunning drive up the coast. Whistler did not disappoint, and really was what I had expected Aspen to be like. We had a great afternoon wandering around the village, we even grabbed a COWS ice cream.

Our last day in Vancouver, we headed downtown. I had a meeting on Hastings Street in the Downtown East Side, so I set out before the rest of the family to meet up with the staff at the Vivian. They met me downtown (not on the east side) where we wandered around and checked out Stanley Park. The kids grabbed a donut at Tims to round out their re-entry to Canada.

We loved all the sunshine and summer weather in Vancouver. Next up, Charlie turns 11 in the Rockies.