Alaskan cruise trip report - Day 2 - Vancouver

Vancouver

I woke up early, not yet adjusted to the two hour time zone shift. Unfortunately, I woke up really early, earlier than I would normally even wake up in Austin. At 3:30, I was wide awake. Around 5:30, I had just started to drift off when Emmaline woke up. She didn’t go back to sleep, despite my best efforts and we finally gave up and got out of bed at 6:30. After getting ready, we went down to the restaurant in our hotel and ate breakfast.

After breakfast we went outside at 8:30 to catch the 8:40 shuttle bus to Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. The bus was pretty full and included the Jarretts, who I had become friends with online and we would be sharing some further adventures with later in the week. The bus ride took 20 minutes and we bypassed the line since I had bought tickets online and headed straight for the bridges. It was great getting there early because it definitely filled up later in the day.



The park is really amazing. There is one main suspension bridge, then they have walkways up high in the trees from tree to tree and a couple of different cliff walks. Near the end of our visit, it started pelting rain, which we were unprepared for (leaving all our rain stuff at the hotel since there wasn’t a very good chance for rain - I guess a 10% chance is still a chance). It let up fairly soon after I obtained some of the free ponchos they were handing out in the gift shop!

We left Capilano around 11:30 and picked up the city bus ($2.75 for adults/$1.75 for kids, exact coins only) to Grouse Mountain. We arrived at Grouse around 10-15 minutes later, again bypassed the line for tickets because I had pre-purchased them, and hopped on the tram to ride up the mountain. It was pretty overcast and socked in so we had a great view until about halfway up, then it was obscured by clouds. I had read not to go up if it was cloudy because you miss out on the view. Maybe that’s true, but you still get a view in the tram on the way up and there’s way more to do than just look at the view there.

Once there, we grabbed some quick service lunch (meh) and set out. First we checked out the bears, but they weren’t out (they have a pair of grizzly bears that have been rescued and rehabbed, but aren’t fit for re-release). After that, we caught their bird show at 12:45, which was really great. They had a bald eagle, some hawks, and a couple of owls. It was a very well done show.

After the bird show, we checked for the bears again. Nope. Instead, we went into their little tent they have set up with info about the bears (they’ll also sell you stuff) and warmed up. We are usually pretty good about being prepared for the weather, but we were way underdressed. It was MUCH colder at Grouse than in Vancouver and we really hadn’t accounted for the temperature difference up high. It was windy, misting and cold.

At 2 PM we caught the lumberjack show which was really cute and fun. After the show, we saw a crowd of people over by the bears. Yay bears! So we watched the bears for a few minutes but by this time we were ice cubes and headed back to the tram to make our way down. At the bottom, we hopped on the bus that runs from Grouse Mountain to Canada Place. I had read on the Internet that you could specifically ask the driver to drop you at Capilano. I had emailed Grouse to try to confirm ahead of time and they said that it wasn’t possible. I wasn’t sure so I asked the driver and he said it wasn’t a problem. I gave him some coins in his tip jar in thanks and we took the free shuttle back to our hotel from Capilano.



Back at our hotel, we freshened up and I called the restaurant we where were interested in eating (Cardero’s). They said that there wasn’t a wait, so we got ourselves ready and walked over. By the time we were ready and made the 15 minute walk, they were on a 45 minute wait. Great. So we walked back a little ways to a White Spot, which appears to be Canadian Applebee’s or something. It was…fine.

We left there and walked over towards the waterfront, where we walked along the water towards Canada Place where we were meeting some people from our Facebook cruise meet group for gelato. We had originally planned to go to the famous Bella Gelateria, but had discovered the previous day that the place regularly has a line around the block (planning fail on my part) so we switched to a different gelato place around the corner. On the way we stopped to see the Olympic Cauldron and the 8-bit Orca. After dessert, it was pretty late so we went back to our hotel via taxi so that we could repack and get a good night sleep before boarding the Disney Wonder the next morning!

Click here for Day 3.