Canada!

The flight from Heathrow to Vancouver International was fantastic; no dreaded screaming babies, friendly flight attendants and delicious food. Vancouver it's self was amazing; I kept comparing the city to London, especially when we caught the Skytrain after getting the bus there from the B&B (which did incredible breakfast, by the way). The Skytrain is basically a partially overground, partially underground mini train, which had no driver. The whole thing felt like a roller coaster, being able to see out of the front. The views whilst overground were beautiful, unlike the overground parts of the London Underground trains. Even whilst underground, it was better than London's tube trains; the tunnel was lit and had a small platform to one side throughout the journey, with lit up exit signs every now and then. You don't get that on the London Underground. Besides that, everyone was super friendly, especially the tourist guide who approached us after spotting us looking at the map. The whole city was really modern looking and sparkling clean, there were hardly any old buildings, unlike the UK, where most of our building are older than us.

Vancouver (my photo)

 We also did the Capilano Suspension Bridge, which was great; there was a free shuttle bus from Central Vancouver to the attraction, driving up through Stanley Park. The trees were insanely tall, and there was a cliff walk, where you followed the boardwalk, which was held up by metal rods, round the edges of the cliff.

The main feature of the cliff walk, with the suspension bridge in the background.

After a day in Vancouver, we got a ferry over to Vancouver Island the next morning, to meet Ruth, my mum's cousin who we would be staying with for the rest of our holiday. She lives near Victoria, one of the bigger cities on Van Isle .Victoria is a really nice harbour city, where me and Dad went on a sea plane tour (Sarah and mum were too scared, and Ruth was working) which was really cool and interesting. We also went whale watching on a Zodiac, which are basically speedboats. It was an experience but not the one i was expecting! We saw some Harbour Seals, but no whales. I was sat up at the front, where you get jerked around the most, but still got pretty splashed. Mum, Dad and Sarah sat at the back and got absolutely soaked. 'And expensive way to get wet' as Dad put it.

A Zodiac Boat

During the holiday, we drove up island to Beach Acres Resort, near Parksville, where we stayed a few nights, visiting Tofino and Ucluelet (on the eastern side of the island) whilst we were there. There were lots of deer around, as forest surrounded the resort. We got back from Tofino to find 2 deer and a family of racoons behind the house in the woodland. I very proudly managed to record the raccoons coming through the fence!

On the way to Parksville

Tofino and Ucluelet are about an 1.5 hour drive from Parksville, but it was a beautiful drive up, with hills, lakes, trees and waterfalls galore. We didn't see much of Tofino itself, but we stayed in a motel in Ucluelet. We went to Long Beach and looked out at the Pacific. These were the two days when it rained, and the beach was really foggy and misty and part of Twilight was supposedly filmed there. We luckily managed to see the backs of some humpback whales from the shore, and could see them blowing from their blow holes as well.

We also visited Coombs whilst staying at Beach Acres, a small 'Western' town, made up to look very cowboy style. There was a big indoor market kind of shop called 'Goats on Roof'. Why? Because there were real goats on the roof.

So, overall, the trip to Canada was amazing, and I loved every minute of it, and being this jet lagged it completely worth it.

I even made a video I liked it so much, so you can watch that here :)