Vancouver

We left Victoria on the 4th for Vancouver, we travelled by bus and ferry to the Vancouver Depot. We booked the whole journey through the one company and it was lucky we did becuase if we'd caught a bus to the ferry terminal and tried to get our own ferry transport we would have found ourselves having to wait until 7:00 at night, becuase every ferry leading up to that point had already sold out as of 2:00pm. We caught the 2:45 bus and basically travelled straight through.
I sat out in the sun for the ferry crossing, while Weggie was inside bubble wrapping the breakable souvenir's that she'd bought so far on our travels, when she was finished she came out to join me in the sun.
When we reached Vancouver and had booked into our hostel, we went out to dinner to Denny's before heading back to the hostel in order to call our mothers.
Day two of Vancouver found us buying tickets on a Hop-On, Hop-Off Vancouver Sight Seeing bus, the good thing about these tickets was that they were a two day pass, so we basically had all the public transport that we needed around Vancouver, with the added benefit of a sight seeing guide! (In this instance it was pre recorded, but still highly entertaining).
We went to the Vancouver Art Museum and saw and Exhibit on the Raven People, Native American Indians. The pieces were amazing, which you'll have to take my word for becuase I couldn't get photographs. My favourite pieces were the masks or anything carved out of this ebony coloured wood.
It was too late to go to Stanley Park that afternoon so we rescheduled for the next morning.
We caught the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus to Stanley Park, a wonderful public park in Vancouver, which had free admitance and beautiful scenery.
We went on a horse drawn carriage ride around the East Side of Stanley Park. The carriage was drawn by two horses, Smokey and Bandit.
One of the things that we saw at the park were totem poles. Totem Poles are actually a very common sight all throughout Canada.

Another thing we saw while we were on our horse drawn tour was this sculpture below. The sculpture is called "Girl in a Wetsuit", when the park was built, they actually wanted to have a replica of the "Little Mermaid" sitting on the rock, but they were not given permission, so they therefore had the Girl in a Wetsuit piece commissioned.

After the horse drawn tour we walked up to the aquarium, we figured that since we'd missed goign to the one in Seattle we'd better add an Aquarium visit in Vancouver.
The below image is a Beluga Whale, kinda ugly in my opinion, but the import of this photograph is that they used this very same spot to shoot a scene in Stargate... and no the scene wasn't about the damn whale, it was just a meeting place for Sam and Pete. And no I won't go into any more detail, you who have no idea who Sam and Pete are, are probably very happy with that fact.

This picture is of a sea otter at the Vancouver Aquarium, the sea otters were really cute, we got to see them when they were feeding. They pick up the fish, then float on their backs and eat with their heads out of the water. Apparently they will eat their own body weight in food in a single day, becuase they have a really fast metabolism.

In Canada, this year it was the year of the bear, i believe when my parents were in Canada they had moose, well we've been seeing all sorts of painted and character bears all over Canada, but it wasn't until we saw the bear below that we really felt like having our pictures taken with it. Yep, this would be our favourite bear, Darth Veda Bear!

We went to Granville Public Market after Stanley Park, but it wasn't what we were expecting, we've come to realise that the Canadian and American's ideas of what a market is is vastly different from the Australian Idea. Instead of outside stores with relatively cheeped priced produce, this was all inside a building, and well a bit of a disappointment. But regardless Weggie and i had a good time and are looking forward to getting to Toronto tomorrow and seeing my familie's friends Pat and Don!