What a weekend! I honestly feel like today is a hangover day, minus the traditional pre-hangover day events. Let's call it my Grouse Grind hangover day ... and I'll get to that in a minute! Earlier in the week I made the comment that long weekends mean so much more when you're employed, and it's extremely handy for us that there's pretty much one long weekend per month in BC. How convenient that the first of August happens to be 'British Columbia Day'! Originally we'd contemplated going up to Whistler but trying to get bus tickets or a cheap rental car at short notice ended up being more trouble than it was worth so we decided we'd stay in Vancouver for the weekend and attack the list once again.
Saturday morning started with a well deserved (or not?) sleep in. We'd both been fighting off cold symptoms from earlier in the week so a sleep in was in order. It was such a beautiful day outside we decided we'd head to the local West End markets for a coffee fix (for Steve) and a brownie fix (for me). Yes, it was delicious. So delicious in fact, I forgot to take a photo before devouring the entire thing (but not without some resistance to Steven's attempts to have a bite).
 |
| Comox Street Markets - our local |
 |
| Markets embracing Pride Weekend! |
Later in the morning we headed off to have lunch at Horseshoe Bay. What a gorgeous little place! Horseshoe Bay is one of the two areas where the ferries transfer from Vancouver to Nanaimo (Vancouver Island) and back (the other being Richmond, where we caught our ferry to Victoria). We spent the afternoon walking around and admiring the million dollar houses, picnic-ing and making the most of the sunshine. I also forgot to mention that this weekend marked the start of Pride Weekend in Vancouver. I took great delight in collecting evidence of Steven embracing Pride Week to its full potential ...
 |
| An example of the impressive houses at Horseshoe Bay |
 |
| Horseshoe Bay - pretty scenic! |
 |
| A perfect day for a picnic in the park! |
 |
| Steve embraces Pride weekend ... |
 |
| Nanaimo Ferry coming in to the Bay. |
 |
| Enjoying the sunshine! |
Saturday night we made our way to English Bay to watch the first of three fireworks shows - part of Vancouver's annual 'Celebration of Light' which involves a fireworks competition between three countries - Canada, Spain and China, who was first up on the agenda. The firework shows take place over the course of a week, with Spain presenting their show on Wednesday night and Canada rounding out the competition on Saturday, August 6th. China's show was pretty spectacular. I generally find fireworks to be fairly underwhelming so I was pleasantly surprised.
 |
| I'm sensing a Pride theme here Steven ... |
 |
| Fireworks! |
 |
| More fireworks! |
Sunday morning began much the same as Saturday morning. I had all the best intentions to get up early but it didn't really work out that way. Fortunately Steve took one for the team and did his long run (25k) for the weekend so I decided it was only fitting to reward his hard efforts with a trek to Grouse Mountain and our first attempt at the infamous Grouse Grind! To set the scene, we'd finally got ourselves sorted and ready to head off, I'd done the necessary public transport research (or so I thought - hah!) and we began our walk to West Georgia Street (approx 5 minutes) to catch the bus. Little did we know what awaited us just around the corner ...
 |
| Batman ... say it isn't so? |
Yes, that's right - a whole lotta Lady Gaga!! I seriously couldn't get 'Born This Way' out of my head for the rest of the day. So our grand trekking plans were momentarily foiled by Vancouver's Pride Parade - which turned out to be pretty fun in itself.
 |
| West Jet float. |
 |
| That's not dangerous ... |
 |
| ... at all!! |
 |
| Some great signs to be seen! |
Once we'd made our way through the crowd of people we hopped on the 240. So numbers aren't my strong point and I guess counting bus stops isn't either, because we ended up hopping off at the wrong stop - I'd made us to North Van but not quite where we needed to be to catch the 236 ... it also didn't help that we needed to get off at "Ridgewood" ... but we got off at "Bridgeman" - honestly, Ridgewood and Bridgeman sound very similiar!! (okay, so add hearing to my list of weaknesses back there). Thankfully we asked some nice bus drivers a few questions and made our way to Grouse Mountain in the end. Our first time in the 'burbs since we'd arrived and I can't tell you how gorgeous the houses are in North Van. I wish I'd taken some photos!
So our primary purpose for making the trip to Grouse Mountain was of course to take on the infamous Grouse Grind. Basically the Grouse Grind is a 2.9km trail up the face of Grouse Mountain and consists of 2,830 stairs and an 853 metre elevation. It was a humbling experience to say the least! In fact, when my cousin told me he'd run the Grind when he was in Vancouver I was thinking, oh yeah, well, if he could run it then I'll be fine walking it ... I thought I was going to die. Several times. I even had to use both hands and feet to get myself up some parts of the trail it was so steep. I'm sure Steve thoroughly enjoyed it after his 25 km morning run too. People do run it though, and the fastest recorded time is 21 minutes. Insanity. What's more is that in the midst of the suffering and pain I saw my first wild bear!! I couldn't believe it I was so excited. What makes it slightly scary is that the bear actually ran only metres behind and past us to cross the trail and I didn't even notice until I heard a guy from down below yell out "bear on the right" ... so I turned around after a 30 second brain-compute delay (owing to lack of oxygen I can only assume) and I saw the baby brown bear running down the mountain. Crazy! And so cool!
 |
| The very beginning - provides a nice false sense of security! |
 |
| Views as we make our way up the mountain! |
 |
| Looking back down the trail |
 |
| Winners! Well, finishers, anyway! |
Once we'd completed the Grind and taken a few photos as evidence, we decided to make the most of our suffering and enjoy the rest of the day up on the mountain. We visited the resident orphan Grizzly Bears Grinder and Coola and Grey Wolves (retired from the movie industry!), took the chair lifts up to The Eye of the Wind (wind turbine) and decided to finish off the day with drinks and dinner at the Altitude Bistro which overlooks Downtown Vancouver - a pretty spectacular finish to an incredible day!
 |
| View from the top! |
 |
| View of Downtown (where we live!) |
 |
| Grizzlys!! |
 |
| Wolves |
 |
| Chair lift up to the wind turbine |
 |
| Grizzly playing in the water |
 |
| Views from the chairlift |
Now we're off to complete the weekend with dinner at Guu (a great little local Japanese restaurant)!
Stay tuned for more adventures! :-)
Still very much enjoying reading your blogs and seeing the photos. After the whole ...'I'm not sure how I will go being away from the family for a whole two years' ... before you went, I am actually starting to wonder whether you will be coming back. You seem to be having such a great time.
ReplyDeleteSo, keep up the good writing and photos - so many of which revolve around food! Enjoy.