On our way to Vancouver, we went to our favorite breakfast restaurant, Calico Cupboard! We weren't sure if we wanted to stop since we didn't know how bad the wait at the border would be, but we stopped anyway because we were hungry and couldn't pass up a chance to go there since it's more than an hour away from Seattle. I love the apple cider there! We thought we might have left a little late in the morning, but we ended up getting to the border by 10 or so and there was no wait whatsoever. I was really surprised.

When we got to Vancouver, we had to kill time before we went to the place we were staying. So, we went to the VanDusen Gardens for a little over an hour. They were ok, but I'm sure they're much prettier in the spring and summer. We had rented a room at someone's house that we found on the internet, so we weren't sure what to expect. But, our hosts were really nice people - they made us fresh hot breakfast every morning and they made us steak dinner the first night. It was like staying at a bed and breakfast.

The first few days in Vancouver were mostly spent exploring downtown and going to the speed skating event. We tried to eat some Chinese food, which there is tons of in Vancouver, after the speed skating event was over around 3, but all the ones we knew about were closed until dinner at 5. Hopefully we'll have a chance to have Chinese food next time we go to Vancouver. We did have sushi one night, which Vancouver is also famous for. It was decent, but nothing that great, I'm sure a different place would be better.

Vancouver also has a public market called Granville Island, which is very similar to Pike Place Market. There are all kinds of shops and places to get food there. Unfortunately it was swamped with people who were in town from the Olympics and was busier than it ever gets in the summer. We'll definitely have to go back some other time maybe during the week when it's not so busy.

We went to several parks in the city, including the awesome Stanley Park, which is one of the largest urban parks in North America. In fact, it's 10% bigger than Central Park in New York. We walked a few miles along the eastern seawall facing the main part of the city and could see the Olympic Cauldron and the rings on the water. We didn't spend nearly as much time there as we wanted to, so it is yet another thing we'd like to go to again some day.

On Monday, we took a ferry to North Vancouver and spent a few hours hiking in Lynn Canyon Park. The weather was much better than Saturday, so that was nice. After the park, we went to eat at Nando’s. We first had Nando’s when we visited Australia last October and I loved it. So I researched whether they had any locations nearby and found three in Vancouver! Unfortunately it wasn’t as good as what we had in Australia. The sauces were very different and the fries weren’t as good. It was decent though, and brought back fond memories of hanging out with Adam and Sofia in Melbourne.

We also explored the western part of downtown, mostly along Dedman Street. There were tons of restaurants and stores in that area, including an Italian restaurant where we had our Valentine’s dinner, Ciao Bella.

It was a nice trip, but a little too short. We didn’t try to do as many things as we would on a normal trip, due to the amount of additional people in the city for the Olympics and slower public transportation. We completely avoided museums and the aquarium. I’m looking forward to going back and exploring the city more thoroughly. Fortunately it's less than 2.5 hours away from Seattle.

Here are two videos we took of the Vancouver skyline from the south side of the city:

Vancouver Skyline on Vimeo.

Mountains and Vancouver Skyline on Vimeo.