Stanley Park by Tandem!

I had been waiting soooo long for my first visit to Stanley Park! You hear such great things about it and I wanted to make sure we got there to enjoy it before the rainy season came...so our public holiday on Thanksgiving seemed like the perfect occasion. I had read that you could hire bikes nearby, and when I saw you could hire tandems I was sold on that idea. A few years back when we cycled to Holland from Belgium on a Tandem we absolutely loved it! 

 So after posing for a quick pic we were off. There is a path that surrounds Stanley Park known as the Seawall. It has a double path, one for walkers and runners and one for cyclists and rollerbladers. On one side of the path is the ocean and on the other side is Stanley Park itself. It's really something. 

 We cycled around for a good few hours just taking everything in, The beautiful trees...that were just starting to turn for fall. 

 The skyscrapers of the city in the distance... 

 and then you turn a corner and find strips of sandy beach... 

 and turn another corner to find the infamous Totem Poles. 

 When my mom was 17 and 3/4 (she likes to emphasize the 3/4 bit!) she left South Africa to travel around Canada for a few years. She spent a lot of time in Vancouver funnily enough and told me just before I left how well she remembered the totem poles in Stanley Park, so it was fun for me to stand beside them thinking that 45 years earlier my mom probably stood in the exact same spot (although apparently she doesn't remember the crazy rain so maybe she was here in summer time!) 

 One of my favorite parts of our tour was seeing the Lions Gate Bridge. 

 I think I have a bit of a thing for awesome bridges and I could have taken photos of it all day long (much to Byron's delight!) 

I wanted to make sure I had it covered from every angle! It reminds me of a smaller, greener Golden Gate! 

 We cycled through the middle of Stanley Park too and came across the Rose Gardens which were just so pretty...

and I'll leave you with the craziest thing we saw that day...

That guy must have the best balance ever! 

It makes me a little bit sad looking back on those crazy blue skies! We haven't seen any of that since Thanksgiving.  The rain is certainly here to stay! and I'm beginning to realise it rains here even more than it did in North Wales - crazy I know! 

At least stumbling into the supermarket and discovering these can brighten any rainy day!

Candy Cane Oreos! The holidays are coming...

Dairy Milk crammed with Oreos and White Choc Chips, just what everyone needs to brighten up a rainy Tuesday night!

and my all time favourite Ghiradelli Peppermint Bark! This used to be so expensive when we lived in Turks and Caicos that we had to ration how much we could buy, of course it's still pretty pricey here in Canada but I'm thinking we'll be able to sneak a few extra bags than usual into the trolley this time around!