January 2007 - December 2007: The most exciting time is over again and my family has left again. Here is my big report about my family from Belgium who visited for about 17 days. My family was on holidays in Vancouver with us from June 6 until June 22, 2007. My mom would come to visit us together with an aunt and uncle of mine. I was so excited to see them and to have a great time with them. We mainly visited Vancouver and its surrounding area as it was a bit too far to go to the Canadian Rockies. It would have been too much of a rush to see things and they would have to miss some of the most beautiful areas. My mom has been to the Canadian Rockies with us 2 years ago and I think that my aunt and uncle might come back some day to visit the beautiful Canadian Rockies. During their stay we had a great time and enjoyed so many beautiful places. It was great to be a tourist again in my own area!
*WEEK 1 --> From June 6 - June 10/2007:
*Wednesday - June 6: Today my family would land in Vancouver at 4:25pm. Miichael and I went to the airport to pick them up. It was around 5:10pm when I saw my family walking into the International meeting area at the airport. My goodness, it was soooo good to see my mom again, I missed her so much! Of course it was great to see my aunt and uncle again as well, I hadn't seen them for about 3 years! My family came to our place for a little while. We showed them our house and talked about their flight etc... Around 8:00pm we brought my aunt and uncle to their Bed & Breakfast, which was about 2km from our place, where they would stay during their holidays here. The people from the Bed & Breakfast were older people and originally from Holland, so they still spoke Dutch, which was kind of handy. They were such lovely people! My mom stayed with us of course. We went to bed on time, because I think everybody was tired.
*Thursday - June 7: The weather wasn't too fantastic today, it was cloudy with a bit of rain. We picked my family up at around 10:00am, we sat around our place for a little while and then we decided to go to one of the big shopping malls in the area (called Metrotown). This shopping centre has about 450 stores. It was interesting to see and my family really enjoyed it as they don't have many of these huge shopping malls. In the afternoon it looked like it was going to clear up a little so we took them to Burnaby Mountain. From up here you get a nice view over the city, the ocean and the mountains. The city was basking in the sunlight, but Burnaby Mountain and the surrounding mountains were still covered with dark clouds and some rain drops. We walked around for a bit and decided to go have some coffee and go home. After dinner it seemed like it cleared up a little, no more raindrops and the sun was trying to appear. We decided to go to Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver. From here you can walk along the beach towards Vanier Park while you have great views over the city, the mountains and the water. We walked all the way to Vanier Park and along False Creek until we were almost at Granville Island. At that time it was getting a little darker and the city lights were starting to appear. We decided to walk back to the car and go home as it was nearly 9:00pm. We had a great day and my family was very impressed with the views of Vancouver, the ocean and the mountains. They seem to really like it!
Some views with my family on Burnaby Mountain, Kitsilano Beach and Vanier Park.
*Friday - June 8: Today the weather seemed quite nice. It was cloudy, but the sun came through as well. We decided to spend the day in Stanley Park, we picked my family up around 10:00am. Once we got to Stanley Park, we parked the car at the Info Centre and walked to the Totem Poles which was a walk of about 1.5km one way. On the way we enjoyed the beautiful views over the city while the sun was really coming out and warming things up. We could see the beautiful views over downtown Vancouver with the Canada Place where a huge cruise ship was docked at that time. We walked towards the totem poles and there was a little gift shop as well. Of course we had to wander in there and have a look, but we didn't buy anything. We walked towards the other end and had a great view over the North Shore Mountains and the Lions Gate Bridge.
A few hours later we went back to the car and drove up to Prospect Point where you have a better view over the ocean, North and West Vancouver, the Lions Gate Bridge and the mountains. Up here we could really see the devastation of the windstorm we had in December 2006 which blew over some 10.000 trees in this beautiful park. They are still working hard to clean up all the trees and restore the park. I was glad to see that the raccoons are still living here as we saw a few of them wondering around. We enjoyed the views over the Pacific Ocean, North & West Vancouver, the Lions Gate Bridge and the mountains. It was about 1:00pm and we were all a little hungry, so we decided to eat something at the Prospect Point Cafe. We sat at the patio outside and we all had the "fish & chips"...very greasy but oh so tasty. That was enough to keep us going for the rest of the afternoon.
Later on we drove down to Second Beach where we parked again and walked on the seawall towards English Bay. There were some people swimming in a pool by the beach and there were quite some people on the beach as well who wanted to soak up some sun. We were getting quite warm from all that walking and decided to walk up to Denman Street to find and ice cream parlor. We were looking for Dairy Queen, but we couldn't find one on this street. Then across the street we saw Mondo Gelato where they were selling all kinds of flavors of gelato (Italian icecream). My uncle wanted to treat us all for a lovely gelato, so we stopped here and had some ice cream. Hmmm....that was absolutely delicious ice cream and a welcome cool off at the time. After Second Beach we drove back into the park where we visited the Rose Garden and we stopped one more time somewhere along the seawall. That was that for the day. It was about 7:00pm and we were heading home to find a nice restaurant to have dinner. We went to White Spot, which was close to my family's B&B and not too far from our home. We all had a delicious meal and my aunt and uncle really seemed to like this restaurant. My mom couldn't finish all her food, so in most restaurants they will ask if you want to take the rest home. So, we did and this way she could have it some other day. It was time to go home again.
Some views from our day in Stanley Park.
*Saturday - June 9: This morning it was raining and quite cloudy. Not so much a day to do "outdoorsy" things. Well, Michael and I needed to stack up on some food and other things...so we aksed if my family felt like doing some shopping. We went to a big warehouse type store where they sell everything in bigger quantities. We usually go to this store to by meat, milk, bread, cereals, laundry detergent and other items. My family seemed to like this store very much as they had all kinds of different things than they have in Belgium. They like the prepared food trays, such as fruit trays or vegetables trays with a dip for get togethers with family or for a barbeque. After that we went to another shopping mall and another grocery store where picked up some items for dinner. We spent the rest of the evening at our place chatting about all kinds of things and having a good time.
*Sunday - June 10: The weather didn't seem to look much better than yesterday. It was cloudy with the odd rain shower. We picked my family up around 10:00am and we sat at our place for a little while and waited if the weather was going to get better. Around noon it was dry, but still cloudy so we decided to go have some lunch at Subway (some sort of a sandwich bar). After that we went to Port Moody where we were going to visit Belcarra Regional Park and Buntzen Lake. This was about 15 minutes from our place. At Belcarra we grabbed a folder and decided to go for a walk through the forest. These forests are considered rain forests, but not the tropical kind of course. These are temperate rain forests and they are found along the west coast of the United States and Canada. It was such a wonderful walk and everything smelled so fresh. The sun came out now and then which really made the forest look like a fairytale forest. We saw different kind of birds and trees that were covered in moss. After that we went to Buntzen Lake where we spent some time walking along the beach and enjoying the view. Now and then it started to rain a little, so we decided to go and find a nice restaurant. I remembered from work that we had such great food at Christmas from a place called Pasta Polo since we were in the neighbourhood, I suggested that we would go and have dinner there. My goodness, everybody just loved the food here! It was yummy...I had something called "Baked Chicken Penne", which was fresh penne rigate baked with julienne cut chicken filet, sun-dried tomato and fresh mushrooms in a creamy white wine basil sauce. It was delicious. Michael had a reunion with some classmates and they were going to play hockey this evening, so he had to go around 7:30pm. My family came to our place and we watched some videos that Michael had taped since we have been togehter. We watched the video from when he came to Belgium to meet me in December 1999. Then we watched the video from when I came to visit Michael in Vancouver in February 2000. And the last we watched was the one from the Canadian Rockies in 2005. It was fun and we had a wonderful evening.
Some views from our day in Stanley Park.
To continue with my life in Canada
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