2023 Canada – Vancouver – Rob's "Beats Working" Blog

Today is our last day before we make the trek back to Australia, starting tomorrow morning. We woke to another beautiful day here in Vancouver with the blue skies making another appearance. We had our hotel breakfast. The omelette dude was back, so that’s what I had plus a pancake and some fruit. Deb opted for the pancake an fruit option as well.

Today’s aim was to tick off Stanley Park which is a 405-hectare (1,001-acre) public park that makes up the northwestern half of Vancouver’s Downtown Peninsula, surrounded by waters of Burrard Inlet and English Bay. The park borders the neighbourhoods of West End and Coal Harbour to its southeast, and is connected to the North Shore via the Lions Gate Bridge. The historic lighthouse on Brockton Point marks the park’s easternmost point. For context, Stanley Park is about one-fifth larger than New York City’s 340-hectare (840-acre) Central Park and almost half the size of London’s 960-hectare (2,360-acre) Richmond Park.

We started by visiting the Vancouver Aquarium which is a public aquarium located in Stanley Park. It is a major tourist attraction for Vancouver, but also a centre for marine research, ocean literacy education, climate activism, conservation and marine animal rehabilitation. The Vancouver Aquarium was one of the first facilities to employ professional naturalists into their galleries.

In 2010 the federal and provincial governments announced capital funding of up to $15 million over 3 years to help pay for a planned expansion of the 54-year-old facility. The aquarium remained a nonprofit organization owned by the City of Vancouver until 2020 when lockdowns associated with the COVID pandemic impacted revenue. It was sold to Herschend Family Entertainment, the owners of several theme parks including ‘Dollywood’

Unfortunately, due to the redevelopments, some of the displays were not fully viewable, particularly the sea otters (which are strongly promoted). More recently, the focus has moved from Orca and dolphin shows to research and education and hopefully the aquarium will find the balance that continues to attract people through the gates while emphasising the delicate state of our oceans.

Stanley Park has a number of flower gardens, including a spectacular rose garden that boasts 3,500 rose bushes which was established in 1920. We then went to the Stanley Bar and Grill and had some lunch from a menu that seemed to be the same as the Capilano menu. I suspect the same lessees run both establishments.

After lunch we walked along the seawall that surrounds the park. Construction of the first 8.8 kms of seawall and walkway around the park began in 1917. The walkway has been extended several times and is currently 22 kms long, making it the world’s longest uninterrupted waterfront walkway. The walkway is split into bicycle and walking lanes and on fine days like today is very well utilised.

We racked up almost 8 kms of walking by the time we returned to the hotel. It was a nice walk along the waterfront especially with the autumn colours really starting to come out. On the wildlife front, no bears today, but plenty of squirrels and a group of racoons!

Dinner tonight was at Joey Burrard. It was an excellent meal where we shared some seared salmon sushi and sichuan chicken lettuce cups and then I had a sirloin steak with lobster while Deb had crab lump cake. For dessert I had creme brulee cheesecake while Deb had italian donuts with lemon curd.