Canada here we come!: Vancouver, Canada

TD: We pick up Gaudia at the airport and spend a couple days in this wonderful City. Vancouver has a very positive vibe – people seem to be very happy here. There’s hardly any crime, graffiti, punks, gansta’s etc.. It’s very diverse, mainly with Asian cultures, and seems to be thriving. If I had to live in a big city, I would probably pick San Diego with Vancouver as option 2.

It’s raining flowers in BC. (Somehow Gaudia isn’t jetlagged so we start touring the area right away.

TD: We happened to be in town for the Vancouver Marathon going on right outside our hotel. Good time to test out the new camera which I was able to get it cheaper in Canada because it had been on the market here for >6mo. The camera is a PowerShot SX1iS. I figured given what we were doing, this trip, we needed a good camera. My friend Peter got the same camera and he described the quality somewhere between a good point and shoot digital and an SLR. The unique features of this camera are an extremely capable zoom lens (equivalent to 29-590mm in SLR terms) and it records in full 1080p HD at 30fps.

This marathon supporter cracked me up. He actually kinda looks like Rob Schneider.

Sunset from Stanley Park

Did I mention the camera has a killer zoom? Look how far away that ship was. I did take the zoomed up shot a bit earlier in more light.

A couple touristy things not to miss Vancouver area are the Capilano suspension bridge and the cable car up to Grouse Mountain. The suspension bridge is seriously scary – doesn’t seem that hard to fall off that thing. The cable car takes a huge vertical ascent to the top of Grouse Mountain, which is also a ski area. The people that live in N. Vancouver have a ski resort in their backyard. I had no idea.

Gaudia’s first snow and immediately she starts forming a snowball to throw at Himne. To get here you take the cable car up from N. Vancouver to Grouse mountain. Within 5 mins you are in a ski resort – how convenient for the Vancouverites.