Stanley Park

We ended up visiting Stanley Park twice while we were in Van. The first day we went later in the afternoon and wandered around looking for bike hire places. We had minimal success so ended up walking around the lake, enjoying the beautiful weather and just chilled down by the 'beach'.

Some interesting sculptures. there was a guy down on the beach that actually looked like the sculpture  hassling all the people sitting on the beach

A squirrel... we're kind of getting over taking photos of these little guys there are just so many of them around! Taking photos of them is almost the equivilant of taking photos of black crows or magpies back at home.. (i think the locals think we're a bit strange!)

Our first raccoon sighting!

We went back to the hostel and looked at a map to find out we hadn't even entered the park and had just done the outskirts!

On our second visit to Stanley Park we were a little more prepared and had sussed out where we could hire bikes. The weather was nowhere near as nice as it had been on our first trip but we were determined to jump on our sweet cruiser bikes and complete the 10km loop along the seawall around the park. There were some classic sights including the famous Lions Gate suspension bridge and amazing views of the city facing north.

The weather wasn't really with us on this day and continued to get worse so we decided to make a pit stop  into the Stanley Park Aquarium midway around the circuit (just in the nick of time as the rain began to fall!). The aquarium houses some very different animals to the aquariums back home. Not only do they feature some nice Barrier Reef style coral formations, but there were different sections for the various places throughout the world including the Amazon, Arctic, Deep Ocean and of course the River Systems which are the home of the spawning salmon! 

I managed to take a few cool 'screensaver' style aquarium videos

 

Em was lucky enough to have a turtle come pose for her to take some pics

and the dolphin was a bit of a poser too! 

The Otter - he was just swimming backwards and forwards on his back doing some impressive tumble turns when he got to the end

Poisonous frog

The Amazon is a scary place - everything is seriously oversized!

Even the penguins looked cold!

While we were there,  a documentary screening of the life of a Salmon was played in 4D (by my favourite documentary narrator - David Attenborough). There were some amazing visuals and suprises along the way - A bald eagle swoops in to grab a fish, and as the fish is plucked from the water something comes from behind and pokes you in the back and splashes you in the face!! haha the 3D effects were also way cooler than those that we get these days at the movies. (and the glasses WAY more attractive ;) )

4D Movie

 The Arctic section had 2 beautiful Beluga Whales and we were lucky enough to time it right and see a show!

It seems customary these days to ensure there is at least one tank at all aquariums with Nemo and Dory

and the jellies!

A butterfly posed for Em too..photos didn't quite turn out as cool as her dad's but the butterfly wasn't as pretty!