Dude, Where's My Snowboard?: I'd like a sea otter for my birthday, please...

When faced with such a strange request, most boyfriends would run a mile. Not our Jethro! He obligingly took me to the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park and voila, there were some sea otters. We couldn't smuggle them out unfortunately, but watching them being fed was pretty darn cool! (Pictures are below.)

The Aquarium has a great reputation, and it's deserved. There are three huge beluga whales, two playful dolphins, the aforementioned sea otters and a large, grumpy sealion that you can get very close to. It's an experience not to be missed when you get within kissing distance from said grumpy sealion with a large pane of glass between the two of you. He's not that grumpy really - he has a little harem of three seals to keep him company and they were all very pretty ;-) How grumpy can a man be when faced with such a situation?

As well as the larger attractions we saw a LOT of fish. All kinds of fish from all over the world and back again. We were a bit 'fished' out by the end of it all and Jethro took more than enough pictures, as usual.

It's been a bit rainy here of late - well, this is Vancouver after all - so while we had originally planned to go to Grouse Mountain and ride the cable car, the peaks were covered in cloud so it would have been a waste. We decided to have a potter around Stanley Park instead. Bearing in mind that it takes about an hour to CYCLE around this park, we took the perimeter road facing the Pacific Ocean and started to waddle along in the rain, which started to drizzle down but the preceeded to hoon it down five minutes later in large drops - you know, the kind of rain that bounces back up and splashes you from the ground! Hence we got very, very wet and soggy but both had a good laugh about it in the meantime. Jethro said at least this is a birthday I will remember and he's right! Deciding we would be better protected by the large trees inside the park, we took one of the many marked trails and headed back towards Downtown, staying relatively dry after that. Thank goodness we had decided against hiring bikes for the afternoon as we would have got even wetter.

As all good birthdays should involve cake, Jethro took me to this great little patisserie a couple of blocks from our guesthouse and I think I must have drooled all over the counter when we walked in. So many luscious looking baked goods and so little time... oh well! I plumped for the largest one I could see - called a Double Chocolate Decadence - and could only manage half of it with my cup of tea, that's how sticky and rich it was. That, to my mind, is a good bit of cake.

In the evening, Jethro had booked a table at a restaurant nearby called The Red Door, which was recommended to us by his Mum (thanks Mo!) as she had read about it in the Guardian's travel section a few weekends ago. Well, the place was fabulous. The food was superb (it's a pan Asian grill) and the cocktails were even better. Our one gripe was the inexplicable wierd 80's mix tape playing in the background which was completely out of synch with the ambience but very amusing nonetheless. When we mentioned this to our waitress she was in total agreement and had received other comments about it in the past, telling us that the management only let them put two CDs on and this was the better one! Very strange.

There is simply no denying that sea otters are the cutest. They also eat serious amounts of food and spend the rest of their day grooming themselves so they have a nice life! (If a human ate the equivalent amount of food to survive as a sea otter, they would have to consume 80 hamburgers per day.)

Nope, that's not a hamburger. It's a clam. And he's enjoying it, so paws off!

"I wish they were hamburgers. It's clams, clams, clams!"

This is the ugliest fish we saw, so we took a picture!

I was at first concerned when Jethro said - 'I've got worms!'

A very big, flesh-eating piranha... *shudder* (wouldn't want to stick my hand in that tank, no siree)

The much prettier clownfish - some of you may know him as 'Nemo' (all the kids in the Aquarium did anyway, and proceeded to shout, a lot...)

In a break from all the fishy stuff, this bird was wandering around the rainforest area, completely unperturbed by the sticky fingers of many a determined toddler chasing after it.