{Canadian Cruise Vacation} Day Five

Lauren playing with her toys before we headed out for the day. Lauren woke up early, so we were out the door by 9am.

Justin wearing Lauren's sunglasses in the elevator.

And a Family picture in the elevator.

We walked through this beautiful park on our way to the Aquabus that takes us over to Granville Island.



Burrard Street Bridge from the Aquabus. Tickets for the 3 minute ride were $13 for the round trip ride. Justin was joking about how opportunistic that was...just like Pete from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. "Well that's gonna cost ya." It was hilarious...look at us now, quoting Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.




The market was amazing! We liked it so much more than Pike Place Market in Seattle. It was so clean and organized and easy to navigate too.






We discovered Terra Breads and they are AMAZING. A trip to Granville Island is not complete without a stop at Terra Breads. We got some breakfast pastries here and later went back to get some bread for lunch later in the day.

We bought Lauren a fruit skewer from Fraser Valley Juice and Salad for breakfast and she also had some crackers. Across from Fraser Valley was JJ Bean where Justin and I picked up our morning coffees. Decaf black for me and an ice blended mocha for Justin.

It was so much fun going through the market buying our coffee from one place, our pastries from another and Lauren's fruit from yet another vendor. We ate right out in front of the Public Market on False Creek and next to the Granville Island Bridge.




After breakfast, it was about 10:30am, so we decided to see what else Granville Island had. There were tons of parks and scenic vistas.




We stopped to let Lauren play. She has just been so amazingly good the entire trip. We wanted her to have a little fun too! She and Justin have really bonded on this vacation. She says "DeeDees" now for Daddy. She really never said Daddy before. She said Dada, but never really meant it.



We saw some Canadian Geese and their goslings.




What is it about fences and this kid?


We did some shopping (bought a beautiful piece of art for our travel wall from the White Ocean Gallery) and then went back to the market for lunch. Justin and I had delicious burgers from the Market Grill. It was only $20 for two burgers with fries. Lauren had more of her fruit skewer, some canned chicken and some crackers.

After we ate lunch, we went back inside the market to get stuff for a picnic later in the day in Stanley Park. We picked up some assorted pepperoni sticks from Laurelle's Fine Foods, some more bread from Terra Breads and some meats and cheese from Oyama Sausage Company. Before we left Granville Island, I wanted to walk the False Creek Sea Wall, and that is just what we did.

It was about 1pm by the time we left Granville Island. Lauren ended up wearing her "emergency pants" so we headed back to the condo to change her and regroup before venturing over to Gastown, Canada Place, Coal Harbour, and Stanley Park.

We rode the Tube from Yaletown to Canada Place, got off, opened up a map and were quickly approached by a transient who came running, yes running, over to us to offer directions. We thanked him and then he shoved a cup at us to give him money. Justin was hesitant to give him anything, but then he got pushy, so Justin reached in to his pocket and gave him some change. There was a dollar coin in there. Ugh! The guy still wanted more and Justin told him that was all he had and the guy stormed off. I felt like we got robbed. At that point, I flipped my rings over, Justin moved his wallet to his front pocket, and we put the good Nikon camera away. We went to find the Gastown Steam Clock, take pictures, find our ornaments which we found at Vancouver Souvenirs (where I negotiated the price down $2 for buying 2 ornaments, haha) and then we got the hell out of Gastown as fast as possible. It is so sad, Gastown is right near the cruise ship terminal and so may people get off the ship there and think Gastown is "Vancouver" and it is just a darn shame. Gastown is sort of the anus of Vancouver. Anyways, I digress.


Our next stop was to walk along the Coal Harbour Sea Wall from Canada Place to Stanley Park. Lauren fell asleep right as we got off the Tube and slept the entire 2 hour walk through Gastown and then on to Stanley Park.


Entering Stanley Park.

Downtown Vancouver from Stanley Park.


Lauren woke up right after we arrived to the information booth in Stanley Park. It was so beautiful and green and we were seriously having the most perfect weather ever.




We pulled off the walkway around 5pm on our way to the famous totem poles to have a snack of crackers, fruit and chicken for Lauren and our Terra Bread, meats and cheeses from the Granville Island Market earlier in the day. It was a nice snack. We changed Lauren's pants again and then headed to the totem poles.





We walked along the sea wall for a while and then realized that we were starting to lose daylight and would not have time to make it to the Lion's Gate Bridge Lookout and back before dark, so we agreed to stop there on our way to Whistler in the morning since we have to drive over the bridge to get there.

On our way to the bus stop, we walked past the Jubilee Fountain in the Lost Lagoon.

The bus pulled up within a few minutes of us arriving at the stop, but he already had a stroller on board and told us that he could not take us, so we waited 15 minutes for another bus. While we waited, we let Lauren out to walk around and play...and she came over and sat on my lap, and then went to play with the bust stop sign. That driver allowed FIVE strollers on. It was crazy hard trying to get off at our stop. He started to pull away and I yelled to wait because I was still trying to get my stroller off the bus.


Squished on the bus.

We got off the bus and walked to the Tube after a kind lady offered us directions because we looked lost (we were). We rode the tube back to Yaletown where we stopped at Subway and got two foot longs for $20 (see, expensive!) and then headed home to shower and eat dinner. We went to bed around 10:30 that night. When we got back, I googled how much we walked and it was 13 miles PLUS all the walking on Granville Island. No wonder we were so tired. We are off to pick up our rental car in the morning.