Hotel Auburge and Vancouver

For a long time, we had discussed taking a trip to Alaska, but living in Chicago, neither of us liked the idea of taking a vacation to a cold weather site. But on our last cruise in December, we were smitten by Disney's nine-day cruise from Vancouver and booked it while onboard. After months of planning, we finally boarded an Air Canada flight from Chicago to Vancouver early on Sunday morning. Rebecca scored a row to herself on the plane to nap, giving the parents an open middle seat between them. We landed at Vancouver International, passed through customs and went to pick up a rental car for the day. We drove downtown to drop off our luggage at the Hotel Auberge near the port. The hotel was impossible to find and after circling the area twice, J. R. jumped out and went on foot to find it. When he returned, we found our way to a public parking lot and took our luggage to the hotel. Even though it was only 11AM, our room was ready, so we took the luggage upstairs and went off in search of lunch. We ended up at Fatburger, a fast food place, which had excellent chicken fingers. Then it was back to the car.

Grouse Mountain

Our plan was to go to the Capilano Suspension Bridge for the day but when we got there, there was no parking available. The remote lot was quite a distance away and required a bus ride. Figuring this meant the bridge would be really crowded, we chose our second option, Grouse Mountain. It turned out to be an excellent choice as the weather was beautiful and the views were stunning. We bought tickets for the gondola ride to the top of the mountain and then stopped to watch the videos where they talked about the local wildlife and their bear rescue. We skipped out of the movie a few minutes early to catch the lumberjack show. We were late and couldn't find seats but stood along the side. The show was corny, but funny and we all enjoyed it, which kind of made us wish we had booked an excursion to a lumberjack show on our upcoming cruise.

Bears

We went next in search of the park's two resident bears, but they were both sleeping. This would, sadly, be the closest we would get to seeing bears on our Alaska journey.

From there, we did a few short hikes to take in the scenery and then got in the long queue for the gondola going down the mountain. We made a pit stop at Starbucks for a refresher drink before getting in the car.

Stanley Park and Hotel Auberge

We bypassed Capilano on the way down the mountain because it still looked packed. We sat in some heavy traffic to cross the Red Lion Bridge, where five lanes merge to one and then took a quick drive through Stanley Park. The parking lots were all very full so we didn't try to stop and instead headed back to the airport to return the rental car and take the train back to the Auberge. Rebecca went for some swim practice in the health club attached to the hotel and then we walked down to Steamworks Brewing company for dinner. Then it was back to the hotel to get ready for our cruise to begin the next day.