Wednesday August 26, 2015
We had an early breakfast and met up with Amy, who was now also in Vancouver, and together we drove out to Stevenston to the Vancouver Whale Watch office. We picked up some sack lunches from the cafe next door, suited up in the provided yellow slickers, and boarded our boat. We left the harbour at 9 am. We had only been on the boat for about half an hour when we had our first sighting, which would turn out to be the best of the day. It started with one orca, and turned into about 2-3 pods containing 15-20 animals in total. We spent at least an hour with them, watching them swim and breach alongside their podmates.
Eventually we left that location and went to a second location, where we saw a pair of humpback whales. Overall we were super impressed with our day, and considered our whale watching trip to be the highlight of our vacation.
Back in Stevenston, we wandered around the harbour area and through some shops before heading back into the city. We dropped the car off at the hotel, and went looking for some ice cream. Quite by accident we found ourselves at Bella Gelateria, which was voted Best Gelato in the World in 2012. We waited in the world’s longest line – 43 minutes, to be precise – and were not disappointed by our desserts.
From there, we walked down to the waterfront to watch the float planes for a while, and toured around Canada Place. On a whim we also decided to visit the Flyover Canada attraction. Being big Soaring fans at Disney World, we knew roughly what to expect, and thoroughly enjoyed that as well.
Finally, after a long and very fulfilling day, we had some gourmet burgers for dinner, and then headed back to our hotel to watch The Amazing Race on TV before bed.
Cook Family Travels 