B.C.
I’m on my annual belated summer vacation to the northwest. Instead of hanging around sleepy Seattle for a week, we decided to head overland to Vancouver, British Columbia for a quick visit. Crossing the border in Blaine (above) over to Canada was relatively easy, and only involved a few quick “Why are you coming here?” questions. But a visit to our northern neighbor does require a passport nowadays for U.S. citizens.
The Vancouver Aquarium is Canada’s largest, and has a sharp rivalry with the aquarium in Seattle. National bias aside, I would say that the Vancouver Aquarium is at least on par with the one in Seattle. One of the really cool exhibits they had centered on the life cycles of jellyfish (above), but they also had a lot of aquatic life from other parts of the upper Puget Sound.
The Aquarium is located in the middle of scenic Stanley Park, overlooking the city itself. The view here was simply stunning (above), and it definitely gives Vancouver an edge over Seattle in my opinion. It should be noted that there are a ton of condominiums in downtown Vancouver, however. Traffic there was unbelievably bad.
Then it was on to Granville Island, which is renown for having a huge fresh market on a daily basis. Besides lots of regional fruits and vegetables, this place was a seafood lovers’ heaven (above). Although they don’t have guys throwing fish around like they do in Seattle’s market, it was still fun to see everything they had. There was more wild salmon in this market than probably in all of Nebraska.
There were also plenty of shellfish on sale from Barkley Sound, on Vancouver Island. Very nice looking fresh oysters on ice (above).
Despite all the stories I have heard of how difficult some of the U.S. border crossing officials can be, the way back was relatively painless for us, although they did pull over a number of other cars for extended searches. Needless to say, we had no guns or drugs in the car. I wonder how jammed up these crossings will be during the 2010 Olympics.
All in all, a great trip to B.C.
The Comments
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.