Sampling Vancouver and Victoria Attractions

by Keith and Heather Nicol

The Space Centre is popular with all ages

The Aquabus is an ideal way to get around False Creek

The Nosh serves up great food

The Wildlife Photographer of 2012 show is well worth the trip to Victoria

    On our recent visit to Vancouver the focus was on skiing and we certainly enjoyed the alpine skiing at Cypress Mountain and Whistler as well as the cross country skiing at Cypress. Given our short stay in the Vancouver area we didn’t get a chance to take in many of its other urban attractions. However we did get a chance to sample the show at the H.R MacMillan Space Centre (www.spacecentre.ca) which we really enjoyed. It must have been over 35 years since we had last seen a presentation there and it was great to be back. It is also a very popular place with kids and there were a couple of school groups there when we toured the facility. We also stopped by one of our favourite places- Granville Market and we were surprised by how many people were there in the middle of the winter. Of course, there were no buskers outside breathing fire or juggling knifes like there would be in the summer but it is still a fun place to visit, even in February. From there we took the Aquabus (http://theaquabus.com/) across False Creek and really appreciated how useful these little ferries are. They can whisk you across False Creek to many destinations that would otherwise be time consuming to reach. Another bonus of visiting Vancouver from January 18 to February 3 is that you can take in “Dine Out Vancouver. Dozens of restaurants take part and provide a 3 course meal for either $18, $28 or $38. We tried a just opened restaurant called Nosh (ph 778.-989-0625)and it was superb. This small restaurant in the Kitsilano area of Vancouver serves up Canadian-European style food. We suggest  the Roasted Parsnip & Apple Soup, Rotisserie Pork Shoulder and Cinnamon Orange Rice Pudding for dessert. We also had a chance to go to Victoria and on the recommendation of my brother and his wife we visited the Royal B.C. Museum (www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/) which has an amazing exhibit titled: Wildlife Photographer of 2012. It runs from November 30, 2012 to April 1, 2013 and is the only North American stop for this spectacular show. It features 100 backlit photos out of 48.000 that were submitted! We loved the shot of the polar bear on the ice flow with its footprints clearly outlined in the wet snow. There is lots more to see in Vancouver and Victoria and our blogs from June of this year show some of these. Here is one sample: http://keithnicol.blogspot.ca/2012/06/exploring-vancouver-part-1.html.

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