Wow. Amazing what a difference a half way decent night’s
sleep will make… between the Alaskan Airlines stress, we also had
a bit of a snafu with our rental car (apparently a thing called a
Chevrolet Cruze is a ‘small’ car and it’s almost the size of a damn
Commodore, so we are cruising around town in a gigantic brand new
Cruze when I thought we were going to get a Corolla!), and also got
to our hotel and found they had allocate us a room with only one
bed… would have been fine for one night, but we really didn’t
want to share for three so had teeny melt down over that concept
before the lovely Dana at the Greenbrier’s Hotel sorted it out for
us.
So, went to bed as late as I could 9:30pm and I was completely
zonked on only a small handful of drugs until 6:30am! Unheard of.
Woke up, tea and bagels (breakfast of champions) pottered round a
bit before heading to Stanley Park to check out the little
peninsula area there… formal rose gardens, some Native American
totem poles, a cute lighthouse, the Vancouver yacht and rowing
clubs and all cool fun stuff. But spent most of the day at the
Vancouver Aquarium which was on my ‘to do’ list because of the …
OTTERS!! (I know, big surprise).
I’ve never seen sea otters beforeand I had no idea how huge they are. I swear the larger male they have is as long as I am tall! He’s enormous compared to the little river otters up at Mooloolaba. We also absolutely loved the jelly fish exhibits and all the cool arctic and North Pacific coastal sea creatures – anemones, starfishes, corals, shrimps, sea cucumbers etc,. Took lots of fun photos and had a wonderful time.
Saw some beluga whales, which are just gorgeous, and some harbour porpoises, fur seals, some pacific fin dolphins and tonnes of fishes from up this way. Had to laugh going through the Tropic Zone and running into a Tattered Wobbegong which was the last thing I expected to see today! That and an enormous cane toad that had a note beside his habitat describing how they’re destroying parts of Australia! We were very taken in by a gigantic octopus which made us think of Equinom… huge! There was also a large Amazon exhibit which housed Cayman crocodiles, macaws, anacondas and… wait for it… sloths! Yep, creepy creepy sloths at the aquarium just for shits and giggles. Go figure 🙂
We’ve had a great morning checking all the amazing sea life and are keen to see if we can spot some otters and other creatures in the wild once we hit the road and then the cruise boat. Tonight – dinner out with theCanadian rellies and then a tour of Granville Island apparently which all sounds grand, so will update a bit later.
See? I love this travelling gig, I just hate the travel! 😛