Day 5 (September 21st) Vancouver

Vancouver from the cable car

Day 5 of Canada holiday Vancouver   Our holiday in New Zealand was basically arranged and organised by us but for the Canada trip we are on an organised trip by Great Rail Journeys with whom we have had good experiences on two shorter holidays.  We have a tour manager, Liz Jackson, who makes sure we are in the right place at the right time.  Some parts of the holiday have outings arranged which are optional and there is a lot of free time to do as we like.  Today is a day for us to do as we like.  Vancouver was host to the 2010 winter Olympics and Grouse mountain (the other side of an inlet) was used for some of the events and so we decided to go by skytrain, seabus and normal bus to get to the where the cable car climbs most of the mountain.  A bit of an adventure using local transport and then climbed to where the snowboarders started but no snow there now.  At this area we saw an hilarious lumberjacking display, a couple of grizzly bears which had been adopted as orphan cubs (now 12 or 13) and they came out to see us in their large enclosure,  we caught a chairlift to the top of the mountain and watched zipwire enthusiasts (not us!) doing their thing. 

the two grizzly bears

lumberjack demonstration

We had a snack and then watched a film about the history of the mountain.  We then decided to make the 90 minute journey back to our hotel where we had something to eat and met up with the group and eventually made our way to the station to start the journey across Canada.  We were allocated our cabins and soon settled in.  The train is really long and initial impressions were of a 1950s design and atmosphere, it has the metal exterior finish, almost art nouveau.  The cabins did not seem as well equipped as First Great Western from Penzance but I will report more on that later.  We did a little bit of discovering and then again settled down early as we are still not quite recovered from the long journey.  It has been a lovely day, mid 20s and sunny, and we certainly had a very different, enjoyable one.   Unfortunately the train does not have wifi and so I am having to post this after we arrived in Jasper.

us at the cable car top

surrounding mountains

Vancouver station