Vancouver & Kelowna: Vancouver Aquarium & Lynn Canyon Park

We’re finally here! The recap of the final day of vacation over on the Canadian West Coast. For this one, we took up our courage and headed to the Vancouver city central towards Stanley Park to go to Vancouver Aquarium and get an indoor activity before heading out to Lynn Canyon Park & Suspension Bridge. We talked with some of the locals there (my mom’s friends) and they told us that Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge is almost as pretty as Capilano Suspension Bridge which charges more and is higher. This is a great choice for it being free and having just a lower canyon but still really  nice to walk through.

Vancouver Aquarium

As you can see, Vancouver Aquarium has all sorts of stuff, its not just fishes and rays and giant turtles and sharks. It also has monkeys and birds, etc. It is a pretty cool experience. Something else I like is that they don’t do a lot of shows with the animals. Only the dolphins are in these shows. The porpoises and belugas up top are actually in a training session which is like the trainer talks about these animals and how they came here and their story while giving them a little workout explaining why certain moves helps them to make sure they are healthy. In other cases, they also talk about the wildlife preservation centre that people can call if they ever believe that a marine animal is in danger and needs their assistance so that they can get them healthy and send them back to the wild. While I haven’t seen the documentary on Blackfish, I like the fact that it may be because of things like that documentary which make aquariums more aware about their transparency on how they are treating the animals with them.

Regardless of that, I like going to aquariums quite a bit and Vancouver Aquarium isn’t exceptionally different but they have their forte and is a rather educational process. They have a few different species of animals. My favorite is always the jellyfish tank and also seeing the porpoises and also going to the touch tank and getting to touch rays.

Lynn Canyon Park

As I mentioned above, we indeed skipped the really well known Capilano suspension bridge. I have been there before when I was around eight years old. However, in my mind, Lynn Canyon Park was really beautiful. It was a rainy day but everything was absolutely lovely just with the rainforest and the tall trees towering over us. It was a great place to go. And a nice way to round up our vacation with a nice light hike around. It didn’t  take too long but was good enough to give us time and energy to head back to the hotel and pack up for our trip home the next day.

Overall, the Vancouver and Kelowna trip was a lot of fun. We had some fantastic scenery and we had an enjoyable time seeing all the relatives. We got to hike and eat some great food and even fangirl over Storybrooke. There are still a ton of activities we didn’t get to do because of time and hopefully we will return again eventually.

This vacation’s post is done now but as we speak I just got back to work this week after a week off for a lovely staycation where did also went out to do some hiking so that will follow for what seems like Vacation Tuesdays here. 😉 We do have some day trips planned before winter hits so hopefully this segment will go on for at least another few weeks.

Vancouver & Kelowna: Hiking in Whistler & Squamish!

How fast does vacation go by, right? We’re looking back at Day 6 of vacation over at Kelowna and Vancouver this year. It is funny because I am on a staycation as this post goes up and just taking it easy. Still, looking back  at this vacation still makes my heart flutter with joy. We went to some amazing places especially Kelowna having some incredible scenery. Day 6 of vacation that we are recapping today is also one of our most emotional and awesome days of the trip. We headed out to Whistler and Squamish but not before forgetting my coat at the breakfast place we went to and realizing an hour or so into the trip. Luckily, we were heading to Whistler village so at least there would be a possibly of finding something to wear if it got chilly and man, did it get chilly!

Whistler Village

After the shopping priority and picking up a North Face Sweater and Eddie Bauer cap to fight the rain and cold, we walked a little more around Whistler Village.

Whistler Village reminded us heavily of Mont Tremblant village near Montreal.

Lost Lake Park

With that done, we headed off for a hike. Actually Lost Lake Park was more of a walking trail with a little bit of hills here and there. A part of the path was blocked off to preserve wildlife, aka toad migration. So we took a detour, got a little turned around, the rain got heavier and then we finally figured it all out and went back to our car for the next spot.

Sea to Sky Gondola, Squamish

Next stop is heading back towards Vancouver where we pass through Squamish and took the Sea to Sky Gondola. Note to all of you is that my husband is REALLY not comfortable with heights. I am also and gondolas make a little nervous especially at the steepness of this one at the beginning portion so we both picked up all our courage to do this and let us just say that it was extremely worth it even with some heavy rain and fog. Plus, we somewhat got stranded there as they investigated a potential issue which turned out all good thankfully. I like these companies being safe so it didn’t bother me too much when they told us they had to stop it for a while.

Sea to Sky Gondola is so worth it. I didn’t really put a lot of the trail but it is really fun to walk through it and the plants and trees are cool. Plus, there are a few lookout points. We encountered a lot of fog as you saw that came in really thick and dispersed later on but it was still fantastic scenery. I totally recommend it. Its a little pricey but really worth it.

That’s it for Day 6 of vacation!
Check back next week for the last day of vacation in Vancouver! 🙂 

Vancouver & Kelowna: Redwood Park & Iona Jetty Regional Park

Welcome to Day 5 of my vacation this year in Vancouver and Kelowna! We are done with the Kelowna portion at this time but head over to Travel on the menu on top and it will go to the previous posts.

Day 5 is the first full day in Vancouver. We ended up doing two walking trails and going for some shopping.

No day starts without breakfast. Next door to us was IHOP. We both have never tried it so we went to give it a go.

After that, we headed out to Redwood Park. My husband’s goal for this trip was to see sequoia trees and we heard there was in this park. It was a rainy day but had a break when we got there so it was a nice cool walk through the woods. The trails were a bit confusing but we ended up figuring out where everything was. It isn’t particularly a huge park but it was a pretty forest and we enjoyed it.

When we left, it started to rain really hard. You will see in the next few days, we won’t care as much and still pack up the days but seeing as we still had time, we made a stop at Mall Metropolis at Metrotown to try to find a raincoat for my husband since he didn’t have a jacket to better prepare for the next few days and ended up with the majority of the stuff on the shopping haul post HERE! Still, what captured me was this awesome Nintendo booth!

Upon leaving the mall, the rain had died down a little more and we had eaten a quick lunch in the food court. We finally decided to head back to Richmond which is where our hotel is and decided to make a stop at Iona Jetty Regional Park.

Iona Jetty is a long walkway stretching out like a pier. It is right next to the landing strip at the airport so you can see planes landing in front of you all the time. There is a small beach there and wildlife to observe. However, most people go for the walk to whatever distance. We did a few kilometers and decided to turn around mostly because we had a family dinner later that night and had to freshen up and head out.

Unfortunately, my phone went crazy and we didn’t take any pictures of the dinner.

This wraps up Day 5 of vacation! 🙂
Day 6 is going to be a bit different because we went to a lot of picturesque places.

Vancouver & Kelowna: Vancouver & Visiting Storybrooke!

It is time to leave the beautiful Kelowna and the wonderful Okanagan Valley. With an early start to hit the road, we got Vancouver at a decent time. There was a lot of dropping off everyone at different locations. My mom stayed with her high school friend to chat and have fun and ended having lunch with them. My aunt and cousin went to their friends’ place before heading back home. We all said our goodbyes and it was officially the start of our belated honeymoon (since we didn’t have one last year when we got married)

The first stop was the lunch mentioned before which was at this wonton joint in a sketchy-looking place that drove my husband crazy with our parking story when a lady would not budge after he signaled to park. The joys of a big city, my friends. That is pretty much what we got from the entire trip which was not great especially driving a giant car like a  Ford Explorer, tight parking spots, unknown places and lots of traffic. It is one of the reasons why we usually don’t vacation in mega cities much just because we already live in one. So you’ll notice in the next few days that we actually don’t stay in Vancouver a lot but head out into the outskirts. That’s for the next few posts.

Lunch

Steveston (aka Storybrooke)

Dinner at Moxie’s

That’s it for Day 4 of the trip! Not a lot really happened. The meals were decent. Steveston was really nice and gorgeous. It was relaxing and comfortable to walk around the town and by the waterfront. The highlight was definitely Steveston! I totally fangirled in Storybrooke. I will be getting back on track with Once Upon a Time soon!

Vancouver & Kelowna: The Drive to Kelowna!

Its the start of the vacation posts! This year’s vacation was Vancouver and Kelowna. It marks a few firsts and some pretty awesome experiences.

The first day of vacation was an early flight out of Montreal to Vancouver. This is memorable because its the first time I’ve taken a trip on a plane with my husband and the second flight he has ever taken. Thanks to our fantastic captain that flew the Air Canada flight to Vancouver, it was a smooth take off and landing. We landed in the morning at the airport, waited for quite some time for our luggage and then met up with my mom who left for Vancouver earlier than we did to spend some time with friends at the airport.

We arrived!!!

The next thing was picking up the car.

We originally had reserved a full-size car but after we talked to the guy at Avis, he suggested that we upgrade to an SUV to fit us, my mom and my aunt and cousin that we picked up shortly afterwards and accommodate everyone’s luggage and still feel comfortable. We ended up with the Ford Explorer. Its been a while that my husband drove such a huge vehicle and just look at all these buttons and controls. We had to take a moment to sit there and figure it all out.

After the car pick-up, it was time to meet up for lunch at Fortune Terrace Restaurant for dim sum. The restaurant review post will be up a little later this week! Chinese food in Vancouver is spectacular so its one to look out for!

With our bellies filled up and all the luggage packed in and everyone aboard, its time to drive out to Kelowna! For this part, I’m going to let my trusty Samsung Galaxy S6 camera do the trip justice (and it doesn’t because its just breathtaking) and look at all that amazing scenery!

With that, we’ve entered Kelowna! Crossing the Okanagan Lake on this bridge was just amazing! We checked into our first ever Airbnb experience and it was smooth and awesome!

That night we headed out to a restaurant called Basil and Mint which I’ll also do a short restaurant review about! The funny story is that without even expecting we ended up meeting up with our other family that also chose that restaurant and had a huge reunion before my cousin’s wedding the next day.

In the night we headed out with some of my cousins to this new(ish) bar/brewery in downtown Kelowna. I was a tad tired so only had a local apple cider drink. We called it a night pretty early after some good laughs and caught up a little.

That’s it for Day One! Nothing super eventful but it was full of great scenery! 🙂
Drop by soon to check out some restaurant reviews/recaps for the two restaurants mentioned and the next day(s) of the vacation!

Vacation Haul!!

Let’s get back into the blogging pace slowly! I’m starting with a little Vacation Haul!

If you missed the back from vacation post, I went out with my husband to Kelowna and Vancouver in British Columbia or the west coast of Canada. Kelowna was primarily to attend my cousin’s wedding and see a ton of relatives that had went there for the wedding as well. My mom’s side of the family is huge so its rare to get such a huge group of people together. Second of all, it was pretty much like a mini honeymoon for us when we got back to Vancouver. We got married in October last year but we decided to postpone the honeymoon. For us, its vacation/honeymoon but then we recently decided that we might head out to another mini getaway in October for the one year anniversary which is in planning to see if its feasible.

Regardless, we didn’t intend on buying a lot of stuff on vacation but the weather on the west coast was pretty rainy and we had phases of forgetfulness that caused some more spending.

These haul posts are pretty easy to put together as I get over jetlag so here we are!

It happens that the first full day we had in Vancouver was super rainy. In the later days, we eventually decided to head out but we took a break in between and headed to Mall Metropolis in Metrotown.

If you know me, you know I LOVE tea! Like, I love it to absolute bits! In a later post, you’ll see my restaurant review on why I wanted to get this “tea bomb” thing. Anyways, a stop at Teavana looking for this little cute thing for making tea ended up with getting two pouches of tea. The S’mores one is for my husband and mine is the fruity Dragonfruit Devotion herbal tea!

The night before, we actually saw an ad for Victoria’s Secret for its workout stuff on sale. I’m not sure if any of you have shopped for anything at VS but its super expensive. I got there primarily for sports bras and its pretty  hefty in price but awesome quality. When they had this deal for $55 for both sports bra and workout pants, I was all in! I ended up seeking out the deal. Luckily it was also at this mall.

The story behind getting instant noodles was kind of an impulsive thing. One of my cousins mentioned to us that she knew this site for instant noodles ratings and this bad boy was the top rated in 2015. My husband went with me to T&T Supermarket to grab some refreshments for the evening and ended up seeing this one. We also bought the curry one but he ate it already.

These are the unexpected buys. Why? Because one rainy day heading up to Whistler and Squamish, I forgot my brain during breakfast. I blame not having drank any tea for this. And I forgot my raincoat at A&W where we were eating breakfast and didn’t realize until we were almost at Whistler. There wasn’t really a sale but I needed it to not catch a cold and keep warm and slightly dry. They are great quality gear though so I’m pretty happy about it! It proved to be useful for the rest of the trip. By the way, another happy thing was that we went back to A&W in the evening and it was in the lost and found. 🙂

I guess to wrap up the haul is that in Mall Metropolis we also came across the Disney Store.  In case you don’t know, I’m a Disney plush collector. We had limited space so I opted to get the little plushes of Jiminy Cricket and Pluto. At least that makes for getting a Disney plush in every Disney store I encounter. 🙂 They are currently my companions sitting on the printer as I type up this post!

We got some other souvenirs. Shot glasses for one of my good friends and wine and mugs for my in-laws, but they are given away now so I won’t be posting those up. The airfare and the hotel and care rental was pretty pricey for this trip so we tried to keep expenses to the minimum. Not a big haul but they were all quite satisfying finds!

What do you like from this haul?

Back from Vacation!!!

Hey my lovelies!!!

I went off on vacation last Saturday and didn’t really get a post up about an upcoming hiatus hoping that I’d be able to get all five posts done for last week. Turns out that I’m not superwoman and between packing, cleaning, and preparing the house for vacation along with writing and editing for Game Warp and Avenue of Daydreams, I managed three fun posts for last week. Its a little sad to come back from vacation and see the stats but at least you all are still dropping by and there was even a few comments. I had thought that I’d be able to write but between hanging out with family and having a huge reunion thing for my cousin’s wedding out in Kelowna, British Columbia and just having fun afterwards hiking and exploring Vancouver, British Columbia and the surrounding areas, I just wanted to recharge and relax.

 

Suffice to say, I had a ton of fun. I’m uploading pictures from the entire trip to the computer right now as I’m typing this up and I’ll be doing  a weekly segment on the vacation in the coming weeks. It’ll take a few days to get some posts up and ready but by Monday, things will be back to normal here!

Sorry for not giving a notice! I’m back and I’m ready to get right back on track with everything for the blog! I seriously missed writing and reading all of your lovely posts! I did have a few little things settled during the vacation time related to the blog and Game Warp so I’m pretty excited to get working on those little bits as well!

I’m telling you! Those vacation posts are going to be fantastic! I loved the vacation and have some pretty awesome stories to tell!

I just wanted to say that I missed all of you and writing and blogging and everything! I’m back! Thanks for sticking around while Tranquil Dreams was working at half capacity! 😉

Enough rambling! Gotta get the after vacation chores taken care of and spend some time with my cat.

Look out for the upcoming posts!