Dude, Where's My Snowboard?: A weekend of flauna and forna

It was a holiday weekend in Canada, so we decided to do some more touristy stuff as nobody is back at work until Tuesday.

On Friday night we went over to the University of British Columbia campus, to help our friend Sarah celebrate the successful defence of her thesis (she's a science boffin). Nice one, Sarah! The campus itself is humungous - and very beautfiful - with so many facilities for the students. For example, they have their own golf course! Although most of the students have gone home for the summer, leaving it very quiet, I can imagine that it would be a fantastic place to study and it makes English Universities look tiddly in comparison.

SATURDAY:

Although it was supposed to rain all weekend, we decided to visit the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens, namely because we are currently living four blocks away from them. (Jethro is worried that some of you may think he is turning a little girly, wanting to look at flowers all day. I'm concerned: you should see how many photographs he took!)

The gardens used to be a golf club until the mid-60s when they were salvaged by the Van Dusen Botanical Garden Association. And they have been voted one of the top ten Botanical gardens in the world by Horticulture magazine so these green-fingered types obviously know their stuff.

We were pretty lucky as there was a classic car show going on at the same time, which gave us two for the price of one. Once we'd finished drooling over the pretty flowers, we could drool over the pretty cars... most of which were classic British cars, hence there were a lot of people with English accents walking around which made it feel a bit like we were at a Glorious Goodwood car revival meeting!

Jethro took so many lovely photographs that it was hard to pick, so I did a wee montage:

Ditto on the cars. (Daddy, you may recognise the cream Triumph Stag in the bottom left corner!)

Jethro trying to look manly in a botanical garden - a tricky thing to achieve...

Two more photographs showing off Jethro's top skillz with a camera... (we had to pay the bee for staying still for so long)

SUNDAY:

Sunday dawned bright and sunny - still no sign of rain. (The weather men here aren't a patch on Michael Fish. RUBBISH!)

We decided to take a trip to Lynn Canyon, which is a provincial park on the North Shore of the city. We were going to go to Capilano Suspension Bridge but having discovered it would cost us $25.95 EACH just to cross a rickety bridge, we thought better of it. The Rough Guide told us that there was another suspension bridge in Lynn Canyon park which was equally fun to walk accross and, most importantly, FREE!

To get there on public transport it sounded like a bit of an epic journey but it was actually very easy. We got a bus from Oak St to Downtown, walked to the SeaBus termnial, hopped on a ferry which took us over to the North Shore in thirteen minutes flat, and then hopped on a bus that took us to the park. All for princely sum of $2.25 and it took about an hour.

(The bus tickets here are valid for 90 minutes of travel so you can get on and off again within that period of time - plus they include the SeaBus and SkyTrain which is very good value.)

The park iself is very beautiful with lots of very tall trees, the aforementioned slightly unsteady suspension brige and a multitude of trails and paths that you could hike. We found our way to a 30ft plunge pool that is a popular place for swimming in the summer and saw that a few brave souls were taking a dip with their dogs. Having dipped a finger in to test the temperature, I would state that they were VERY brave souls indeed, as it was freezing...

After a fortifying ice-cream break (we hiked for about two hours), we hopped back on the bus which took us to Lonsdale Quay (where the SeaBus terminal is) and we had a potter around the indoor market there. It's not quite as good as Granville Island but it's still a pleasant way to spend an hour or two before you head back to the city.

By late afternoon, it had clouded over and rain looked to be on it's way. We decided to opt for a bit of escapism and went to see the Da Vinci Code at one of the large downtown cinemas (where we experienced the rarity of a RUDE Canadian behind the ticket desk... I was quite shocked!) This cinema had about six screens all showing the Da Vinci Code every half hour and they were all pretty much sold out. But we got a ticket and saw the film none-the-less. Jethro loved it, but I was a little less enamoured. It was good, but not AMAZING.

The suspension brige, which Jethro enjoyed wobbling immensely, much to the chagrin of some other wimpy tourists.

Alex peeking around a tree stump (these were the original trees that were logged back in the 1900's - you can still see the jagged saw marks on some of them.)