Spring Chickens

So, the final Vancouver details - and we have been in Australia for three weeks now, so apologies to anyone who wanted up to date information.. On the weekend of 21/22 June, my Canadian relatives came down to visit - my (great) Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Norman, their daughters Sheila and Val and Sheila's husband Greg. We last saw them in Calgary in 2001 so they haven't met any of the kids before. We'd like to say a really big thank you to them for flying all the way from Edmonton, it really made our visit to Vancouver special. And also a big thank you to Greg (who is also an Orthopaedic surgeon) for putting Nick in touch with Vancouver contacts to see if he can do another fellowship there in a year or two. Watch this space... Anyway, after meeting and greeting at the hotel, it was time to get out and about and where do you go for lunch when you can't decide? Well, back to somewhere you have been before of course... So back to Granville Island on the bathtub boats it was..... for another lovely lunch and an attempt to see some dragon boat racing. Discovered we were in the wrong place for dragon boats, but did manage to catch a bit of a jazz festival whilst sitting outside in the sunshine and then retreated to a pub (children in tow) for local Vancouver beer. Mmmm.

Wandered into town for Italian dinner, ate drank and were merry (you'll see from the picture that the boys were not so much merry as clinically insane...) and wandered home at a leisurely pace.


Headed off early the next morning to tackle the Capilano Suspension Bridge (http://www.capbridge.com) - just outside Vancouver. Seemed like a good idea to take four unpredictable, mostly uncontrollable, hyper children across a thin strip of swaying woodwork 230 feet above the Capilano River, but actually they were fantastic. Shame their father thought he'd ignore the signs and see how much he could make it sway. And it really does...

It was built in 1889 by a Scot, of course - George Grant Mackay, a civil engineer who was also the Vancouver City Parks Commissioner responsible for setting aside the land now known as Stanley Park- and Aunt Evelyn remembered crossing it about 50 years previously, but I'm guessing it's undergone some major modernisation since the early days....

We then went on the 'Treetops adventure' which is a series of seven suspension bridges linking platforms high up in the trees and reaching up to 100 feet above the ground. In retrospect, I'm amazed we made it home with all the children and only employed minimal bellowing! Sat afterwards outside the gift shop in the beautiful sunshine, listened to live bluegrass music and drank beer. Oh yeah, and I ate a whole piece of Cookies 'n' Cream fudge... I wished I lived in Vancouver... If you haven't been, go!


Thanks again to the Edmonton Crew for making it a really fantastic weekend.