Queen Elizabeth Park

The day following my afternoon in Downtown Vancouver, I visited Queen Elizabeth Park.

The park isn't that big (especially compared to Stanley Park), but was great to look at on a sunny day like the one I went on.

Furthermore, the park is the highest point within the city of Vancouver, so the view was spectacular.

At the centre of the park is the Bloedel Floral Conservatory. It was nice to look at, but I didn't enter as I didn't want to spend the money, and the weather was just too good outside.

Just beyond the conservatory was a fountain surrounded by places to sit. It would have been a perfect place to chill and have lunch. Unfortunately I hadn't brought any food with me, so I just chilled, took photos and recorded the fountain doing its fountain thing.

One of the mountains visible from the park is Grouse Mountain. I wonder if that's walking distance.

Continuing my walk around the park it was clear that it has a strong emphasis on horticulture. Quarry gardens, rose gardens etc., they put a lot of work into it.

I should also mention there is a restaurant in the park called "Seasons in the Park".

Just looking at the place I figured it would be a bit pricey to actually eat there, so I waited until I left the park, and grabbed a sub sandwich from a Subway downtown. Maybe I'll come back when I've earned a bit more cash.

Totem Poles, Snowshoeing & Xmas

Sorry for being so lazy about updating this blog, it's been a crazy few weeks.

Anyway, before Christmas I made another visit to Stanley Park to finally see the infamous totem poles.

It was approaching dusk, and the sunset was awesome. I got to see a few other features as well, such as this sculpture...

and this dragon ...

The walk gave me a pretty amazing view of North Vancouver, which was amplified by the sunset, and the snow on the mountains beyond the city.

A few days after this I went up Grouse Mountain again with Liz from Safeway. This time it was at night, and showshoeing was the order of the day! This was a lot of fun as it had been snowing heavily for a couple of days beforehand, so the coverage and texture was perfect! Going up hill was fine, but downhill was quite tricky, and half the time I was sliding on my ass. However, the snowshoes helped with this.

Unfortunately this was the only half decent photo I was able to take. This was mainly because it was very dark, and partly because I was busy making sure I didn't fall down cliff or something.

On Christmas Day I went out for a dinner with a few SWAP participants.

We enjoyed a meal and plenty of booze at the Beaver Restaurant and Bar under the Samesun Backpackers Hostel in Downtown Vancouver. It was great fun!

Well that's it for now, and I'll try to post updates more regularly from now on. However, if you get impatient you can hear about my day to day exploits by checking out my twitter page. If you don't know what twitter is, it's basically a bit like facebook status updates. And if you don't know what facebook is, then check out this interesting video description of twitter here. Furthermore, when I post any blog updates (either to this blog, or my personal blog) they will be automatically referenced in my twitter feed with a link to the post. Well, until next time!

Beaver Lake

The other day I was going to visit horseshoe bay, but I missed my bus and didn't really have time to get the next one as I was going to an ice hockey game that evening (more about that in the next post). Anyway, I decided that it was too nice a day to waste it, so I made my second venture over to Stanley Park.

Last time I voyaged over there I hadn't really planned it, so there were features that I missed which I wanted to see this time round; the main one being Beaver Lake. After ambling around the general area of it's location (I hadn't brought a map with me), I finally found it.

It was getting fairly late in the day and the sun had started to set. This meant that the lake came across as being rather eerie. This was exacerbated by the fact that there was hardly anyone around at the time. I quite like the atmosphere of the photos that I took.

I then headed south through Stanley Park towards Vancouver's Downtown area where I was to meet the SWAP group for the ice hockey, and came across a statue of the park's namesake and an awesome view of the dusk cityscape.

"To the use and enjoyment of peoples of all colours, creeds, and customs, for all time, I name thee Stanley Park."
Lord Stanley, Governor General, October 1889

Stanley Park

The other day it was particularly sunny, so I decided to visit Stanley Park. There really are a lot of squirrels, and that's not just in the park! It was mid-afternoon when I arrived, so I didn't have time to see everything I wanted, but that just means there'll be more to see the next time I go.

Below are some of the pictures I took, as well as a video.

And here's the video. As usual you can either:

1. View the video on this page.
2. View or download the higher quality version here.
3. View any of the previous videos here.