Grouse Mountain and Capilano Suspension Bridge - 30th Dec 09

Today was an amazing day, perhaps one of my top 10 days since arrival in Vancouver. Cam had won some tickets to see the Christmas lights at Capilano suspension bridge. We had decided to go with Emily from work, as she was working around Christmas time, we planned to go on this evening for a friends Christmas Day.

The weather was pretty crappy today unfortunately but I think this added to the day in some way. We headed over to North Vancouver in the morning around 10am, initially we had decided to eat lunch up the mountain however it was booked out, so we went to another of our favourite winter/comfort restaurants, Burgoo. After another beautiful lunch here we caught the bus and went up the mountain. We decided to get an annual pass this time as we have now been here 2 times and pretty much would have made back our money by now. Anyway we jumped on sky-ride, its was raining down the mountain but as we got higher up it was snowing and quite heavy as well, it looked beautiful. They do sleigh rides up there, but these are sitting on a thing which is being towed by a tractor like thing, not very authentic but fun none the less.

Now it was snow fight and snow angel time, soooo much fun, even did a little woop woop woop Homer fun in the snow going round n circles, ah fun times being a kid. We walked around in the snow, this was pre snow-boots time and my feet were freezing and soaked, but it was well worth it. We headed up to the little cafe and sat down for a hot chocolate and beaver tail. A beaver tail is not actually from a beaver but this really nice, fried dough (pastry) type thing, covered in all sorts of things depending on what you feel like. I had a sugar and cinnamon one, delicious. Just beautiful, sitting on the top of a mountain in the snow drinking hot chocolate. Then it really started snowing and we decided to do some ice skating, well Emily and I ice skated and Cam watched again. It was so funny Emily was using the zimmmer frame (the type of frame the elderly use), very good when you are just learning though, she then left this behind and ventured out on her own, I thought she was pretty good for someone who has only done it a few times.

It was getting later, dark and really starting to snow now. We were all quite wet and getting cold so headed back down on the sky-ride, bound for Capilano Suspension Bridge. There weren't many people around which was nice, we got to take our time and walk around. It was really airy walking across the suspension bridge which is 70m high from the river below and 137m across, in the pitch black. When you look down you can only just make out the water and rocks below, it was also really quiet which made it more airy. We walked around for a while, looked at the lights twisted around up in the trees and then walked back across the bridge. Cam also won 2 tickets to try glass blowing. This is no easy thing, however we did have professionals there to try and fix the messes we were trying to make, well actually I don't think we did too bad they just had to help us out a few times. We got to keep the glass as well which was pretty cool. We had to hang around and wait for these to cool a bit so we sat round listening to the carol singers. As it was getting late and we were quite cold being wet, once we had our glass we headed back towards Vancouver.

On our way home we stopped for a quick drink and bite to eat at Doolins. What a fantastic fun filled day!!