Vancouver!

Well, we are back from our first big trip- a few days in Vancouver; a week on a Princess Cruise through the Southeastern part of Alaska, and a week visiting Steven and Tammy, first by a great weekend in Seward, and then in their Anchorage home. We have lots of pictures (over a 1,000 but we are editing them as quickly as we can!) and great stories; we had a great time and this will surely rank as one of the best family vacations ever.

Because we have so much ground to cover we are going to break the post into a few parts; this part covers our stay in Vancouver, which we vowed we will visit again when we have more time.  We had our choice of boarding a cruise ship in either Seattle or Vancouver, and since Ruth and I had visited Seattle in April on our way to Anchorage that trip, we decided to go to Vancouver this time, and it was a great decision. We didn't have a lot of time there; we stayed in the West End, in a very nice small hotel with a balcony (note all of the high rise apartment/condo buildings in the background- it seemed to us that most Vancouverites lived in these types of buildings):

And with a main room that had plenty of room for dancing: 

We were only a 10 minute walk from one of the great urban parks in the world, Stanley Park, where we biked and played one morning.

Totem Poles in Stanley Park 

We walked all around the city; of course the City hosted the 2010 Winter Olympics and there are still signs of the Olympics all over.  Here is the Olympic Cauldron, which was lit from the Olympic Torch and burned throughout the Games; they relight it on special occasions. 

There was a great sculpture in the same cityscape as the Cauldron; we thought it was a Lego Shark but it turns out to be a cubist representation of an Orca Whale 

The Vancouver papers and the residents that we talked to were all deeply embarrassed by the recent riot in the city that followed the Canuck's Stanley Cup loss. In fact the City hosted a free festival in Stanley Park the weekend we were there, in part to put that incident behind them.  There was music, and art, and other activities; we missed Danny's favorite band, the New Pornographers, by one day, but his "second favorite band", Mother Mother, played there our last night in the city, so we went out to see them (and Ruth and I probably raised the average age by 25 years just by showing up). 

Vancouver is a beautiful City, we had great meals there and a great time walking all over, but we were anxious to get on our Ship Saturday morning! 

Our adventures on the Ship and through Ketchikan will follow shortly!