Some of you might have noticed that I have been a little quieter in the last few weeks. After quite a lot of preparation my husband and I have just moved to Canada! We arrived last weekend and since then we’ve been crazily busy trying to find somewhere to live that would suit both us and our cat, Monty. We’ve also made the most of the amazing sunny weather to explore Vancouver and walk around as much as we can! Right now I am watching the election results for the UK roll in, so it seems like a good moment to write a post about our first day.

On our very first day, while we were both pretty jet-lagged, we walked around the South side of False Creek (and then back) for about 15km. We started in Downtown Vancouver with some really yummy breakfast. But we were up so early that even eating really slowly, we were already off a-wandering before 8:30am. We started by walking through downtown Vancouver. There are far more tall buildings compared to London. They look amazing under a blue sky!

Our hotel is right next to a huge stadium in Yaletown. We popped back to check Monty was okay, and then started to explore by walking along false creek. Right at the end of the creek there is a totem pole made from cars. Really close to that is a science museum. We were there way too early in the morning to look inside. I have a feeling we’ll go back to visit at some point.

We walked along the south side of False Creek. It is all clean and a pleasant place to wander. For some reason there is loooads of catnip growing there! At least I think those purple flowers look like catnip!? Hopefully my mum will see this and correct me if I am wrong. I didn’t see any cats rolling around so maybe it is a different plant!?

We just kept walking the whole way along the creek. I really like the way the bottom of the Cambie Street bridge is painted blue. At the moment there is a picture of an unimpressed cat there too.

There are several marinas on each side of the creek. They all looked beautiful with the fluffy clouds reflected in the water. I love that there are so many spring flowers close to the water too. Lots of the flowers, like the foxgloves and irises are a little later than the the same flowers in the UK so it is kind of cool to have a second peek at them this spring.

We took a mini detour to explore around Granville Island. I am so glad we had a look! We have quite a few weddings coming up in the next year, and this lovely arty community seems like the ideal place to start present hunting once we are a little more settled here. As well as the cool shops, I loved the teeny houses by the water and the awesome painted concrete factory!

There is a good amount of yummy looking food in the market on Granville Island. We decided to buy some strawberries. They looked amaaaazing. Huge, juicy strawberries piled up into a pyramid. They were pretty good, but it might be slightly too early in the strawberry season here as they actually looked better than they tasted. Or maybe English strawberries are better? I might have to eat loads more later in the season to check. 😉

After Granville Island there was a huge marina with boats that look like they are used more often, compared to the pristine boats we saw further up the creek. We saw a place to come back to buy fresh fish as well (yay!!) How pretty is this!?

We kept walking past the next bridge, where there was a fence covered in hand painted fishes! How cute are these little fishy critters!?

After the Burrard Street Bridge, we found ourselves in a beach-side park. This area is Kitsilano and it is sooo nice! We kept walking the whole way along the beach, and then turned inland to explore some of Kitsilano neighbourhood.

After that I was distracted looking for pet shops and sushi, so I stopped taking so many photos. We walked back, zig-zagging through Kitsilano and Mount Pleasant before crossing False Creek at the Cambie Street bridge to get back to our hotel.

After our walk, we cuddled Monty and meant to have a siesta for a couple of hours. Of course once we fell asleep, we really slept! Neither of us bothered getting up for dinner so we just kept sleeping until the next morning. Oops.

So anyway, Vancouver has welcomed us with beautiful weather. And now I’ve learnt that a jet-lag plus a long walk results in a reeeeally long sleep!