Our first full day in Vancouver started off perfectly - I woke up without an alarm and looked across the street at the gorgeous B.C. Place arena, then looked down and saw it appeared to have snowed.
Naturally, I had curling on the TV. When in Canada...
After eating breakfast at the hotel, we walked over to the Rogers Arena again, but this time for a behind-the-scenes tour. At that point, I said I have never been so cold in my life (don't worry - I have been colder now, 1.5 months later). Once we got to our meeting place way too early we huddled for warmth and I took pictures. Here's our view of the Telus World of Science.
As I took pictures, it began to snow! I realize now you can barely see the snow in y hair in this photo, but man I was excited. It's been five years since I've seen snow.
Most of our students hadn't even seen snow before, so getting to see snow in CANADA was really exciting for them. And me - I am not going to lie. I even took this terrible picture like "HEY YOU CAN SEE IT'S SNOWING IN THE BACKGROUND!"
Eventually we made it inside to the warmth and did not miss the snow. Despite having been there just the night before, it was still so cool to see the huge arena and learn all of the little things we would've missed just one night prior.
This picture shows just how tall the arena is - but what you can't see is that there are club seats going all the way up tow here it starts to arch. Insane.
Also, Rogers Arena is where the best/worst hockey game of all time took place - the 2010 Olympic Men's Final, Canada vs. the USA. They had really cool displays throughout the concourse, which I always enjoy seeing.
We also got a tour of all of the suites.
One of them has a wine room. The guy told us there is a $10,000 bottle of wine in there. If someone wanted to drink it, they'd have to consume the whole bottle in 35 minutes before it oxidizes because it's so old.
There were two of these restaurant-type club sections, where you get a fancy dinner then have your regular club seats for during the game. The lights hanging were in the shape of hockey pucks and sticks.
After the arena tour, we walked back and stopped by the BC Sports Hall of Fame just so everyone could get this picture taken.
We had lunch at Tim Hortons and rested for a few minutes before setting off on our next adventure - to the Granville Public Market. Those of us who wanted to go had the hotel shuttle drop us off across the street from the bridge, where we could walk over and get a scenic view of the river and area.
It took longer than expected thanks to a few google maps mishaps (nothing major, just irritating), but the view was incredible.
You do have to double back and it doesn't look like you're going to the right place, but once we saw the sign we knew we had made it.
The Granville Island area had lots of cute shops, but everything was crazy expensive, so I bought nothing. We got some pretty pictures though!
The group met me and the other chaperone at a bar where we were getting drinks (a delicious cider for me, beer flights for basically everyone else). One plus of taking college students to Canada - everyone can drink legally.
The weather eventually turned into a cold, rainy, and foggy night. We took a ferry back to near the hotel and walked back in POURING rain. But you can't tell that from this picture. This picture just looks like the Canada movie at Epcot.
In spite of being freezing cold and soaking wet, we had a delightful dinner at an Italian restaurant in a nearby hotel. Part of the group wanted sushi, so they split off and had dinner on their own. We went back to the hotel and I immediately changed out of my pants that were still dripping - only to find out the dye had left black marks all over my legs. Fortunately the dye came right off, but I think it might have messed up a washcloth at the hotel permanently.
Another relaxing morning the next day included a 10:00 tour of the CBC Vancouver office, where we got to see how they shoot news and what it's like to be in a working newsroom.
We even stumbled into a recording studio (pictured below) for their radio shows, and heard one of their radio personalities record promos for the following week's shows.
Of course, this was not enough for us to do on our last day - so almost all of us went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. There is a free shuttle that runs from downtown if you either have your tickets already or are willing to buy them direct at the gate.
It was a scenic ~20 minute drive that took us across Vancouver, through a park, and into the mountains.
And man, it was beautiful.
There was still snow on the ground (in the shade), so I had some fun crunching the snow. I told you it's been five years since I had seen it!
One thing I think Canada does very well is paying attention and showing reverence for the native peoples from the area. These are just some of the totem poles we saw on the trip, but they were gorgeous.
The bridge was in a gorgeous setting. Some people were being idiots (there are always a few) running, jumping, and trying to get the bridge to sway, but by and large it was neat. I was ready to be on the other side of the bridge though!
The view was gorgeous from the bridge - we really couldn't have had better weather on almost the entire trip.
Once you get to the other side of the bridge, there are lots of walking trails and treetop trails where you see tons of Canada's wilderness.
It was such a cool experience - I would absolutely do it again if I were to go back to Vancouver.
When you are on the side with the gift shop, there is another experience called the Cliff Walk. I was not sure about this one - honestly I found it scarier than the bridge! For comparison:
vs.
The suspension bridge has been around since the 1800s and only two people have died. Probably from doing something stupid. The cliff walk is too new! I didn't trust it! But I did it anyway. It was really cool.
We wrapped up the day at the gift shop where I bought the most delicious maple fudge known to man. Seriously. Do yourself a favor and pick some up if you are in the area.
We took the shuttle back downtown but got off in an area closer to shopping.
We shopped for a few hours before returning to have dinner at the hotel. The students bought so much touristy stuff - I stuck with a Roots Canada hoodie. Do actual Canadians wear Roots or only tourists and Olympians? Anyway... our hotel restaurant/bar is where I met one of the drunkest people I've ever met before - but she was very polite and bought all of us Picklebacks (which I'd never heard of). We walked back over to Canada Place so I could get a picture of the iconic sails from the Epcot Canada movie.
And then walked about 5 minutes to see this:
It's the 2010 Olympic Cauldron! It was so impressive in person. Absolutely enormous. If I had a picture of just me there, I would share... but I do not. We walked back to the hotel to pack up and get ready for our travel day on Saturday, which wound up much longer than expected.
When I was sitting at breakfast, I figured I should check on our flight information. Our layover in Salt Lake City was only supposed to be about 30 minutes long, but the Delta app was showing 6 hours. We called our travel agent to see what was going on, and she told us it was bad weather in the area and there were no earlier flights. Okay. We can deal with that. The downside was that it meant we arrived back early Sunday (like before 6 am) instead of Saturday night. But it's a weather delay - nothing you can do about it.
A few airport shuttles came to get the full group. It was pretty busy, as there was a huge rugby tournament at the arena across from our hotel.
Once we arrived at the airport, we asked someone about the bad weather delays. Turns out, it wasn't a bad weather delay. Our flight changed in December and the travel agent didn't notice it at all. Had we not realized it ourselves, nobody would have known until we got to the SLC airport.
All things considered, if you have to spend a few hours in an airport, there are worse airports. Here are some pictures just out the airport windows (from our ~30 minute walk around the entire thing).
There was a good bar that we spent some time at while the students worked on midterms and research papers. We had dinner at Cafe Rio (which I know of from the Mormon Youtubers I follow) and relaxed in the airport.
Our newly overnight flight allowed me to get approximately 15 minutes of sleep. Instead I tried to doze while watching The Favourite.
Of course, because I did not sleep on the plane I felt sick for a week afterwards. All in all it was a good trip. Students are already asking if we can go back to Seattle and Vancouver next year, so I think we will be going again. Maybe with fewer students next time.
