First trip to Vancouver

Actually managed to catch a few winks on the flight to Vancouver night before. I was surprised to see the sky so bright at 9pm. I had mistakenly thought it was crack of dawn until I checked the flight screen detailing the time.

Have never been to Canada before and so was quite looking forward to this short 2 weeks trip. One of the reason that we picked here over others is the idea of whale watching, though we would have much prefer to kayaked with it but time was contraint since we were thinking of popping over to seattle to visit our friend.

The vancouver airport was a little surprising.... it wasnt very tourists friendly in the sense I couldnt find a visitor information counter to enquire details of getting to downtown since we completely did not bother to research on this place before we came. Didnt have the time...
So we jumped onto the cab and thankfully, it only cost Cad$30 to get to our hotel.

Morning was a surprise since it was so bright and cheery at 6am! Christ! I thought it was 9am and jumped off the bed. Summer is cool here and while it was probably about 22 degrees in the morn, it got a little warm about 25degrees by late noon in the sun.

I love being in Vancouver. The place is beautiful, not too laid back but neither is it too hectic like HK. The sky is blue, the air is cool, and the water is blue. It's grid block like new york layout so its easy to navigate. I could actually imagine one to retire here happily. We saw some new condos up at the coal harbour. WOW. I was fasincated. Waterfront living with distant mountain view and with city sort of convenience behind withing walking distance. Who can complain?!

Started the day at the visitor center.I marked a few hot places I wanted to go and vancouver aquarium was my first spot today. i LOVED IT.

We did the costal boardwalk from downtown to stanley park where the aquarium is located. It was a short plesant stroll for about 20mins. In the aquarium itself, we spent about over 4hours looking at every exhibit and display and that is considering we didnt have to Q much. It was good reaching early about 10am since it was relatively less crowded and the major children groups came in after noon and then it got abit cramped at certain displays. However I was pretty lucky as I caught evey single feeding time slot by chance just as I wandered randomly from one place to another.

The first place was the Begula nursery tank without doubt...to watch the new mum and newly born baby calf! Qila,well done! Unfortunately, they chosed today to clean the tanks to knock off the algae so we had lotsa floating bits that spoiled the shots but it was still spectacular. However, once I got past the "wow" factor, I felt a little sad.

I felt the enclosure was too small. The poor whale was contantly swimming in a loop circle non stop. That is all they could do and I felt sorry for their lost of magnificient magnitude of infinite space in the sea. Being born in enclosed habitat, they can never be released into the sea it seemed.... I found it abit cruel to keep them in such a small place where they can only do circles.

Even if they try to tell me it was ok, yeah, its ok now that the baby is small. Imagine when it grows, including the dad, mum and grandma begula whale, that will be four adult whales cramming in that fixed space...I pity the baby for never ever able to witness the clear blue depth of the ocean out there....

Anycase, I will leavethe aquarium trip as another seperate post after I download the pictures. There were so much to see especially the frogs displays but unfortunately my battery ran out. Stupid me forgot to charge the battery so I couldnt take alot of shots. But at least I had the Begula whales:P