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Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Vancouver

This week we are staying with Chris and Bud in beautiful White Rock, near Vancouver.


Chris and Bud

The pier in White Rock
We met them on a cruise out of Ft. Lauderdale, two years ago and became good friends. Since then we've also traveled the British Virgin Islands and the French West Indies with them on the Tere Moana... another great cruise. Next week, we all head for the South Pacific to cruise on the Paul Gauguin. How smart of us to become friends with an event planner who knows about everything in British Columbia! Chris is a genius at filling our days with the coolest things to do, while we tool around mountain roads in Bud's M Series BMW Convertible!

The town of White Rock is near the US and we often see a Coast Guard boat patrolling the boarder which is about a half mile off shore.

We overlook the row of restaurants on the waterfront street and have our choice of some 40 eateries within walking distance. This is a great place to live. Last night we had a fantastic meal at Cielo's, a top notch Italian Tapas place. The bruschetta was by far, the best I've ever had.

To start the visit we went to the grand opening of the new Sea to Sky Gondola where we climbed Squamish area mountain the easy way.


View from the Top!
We watched three bald eagles soaring at our mountaintop level when two of them started fighting. They locked talons and fell like a rock until they thought better of it and decided the fight better end quickly or they would both lose. Would you say they were playing chicken? Not very dignified for eagles says I. They were still very interesting to watch and we were relieved they lived to soar again. I'm guessing they were fighting over a lady eagle. You know how they can provoke and boys will be boys...

Tease...
I found myself a bit frustrated having to carry two lenses up the gondola when Tamron had just invented the nearly all purpose lens of my dreams. My problem was leaving Florida on May 14th and the lens becoming available on the 15th. Bad timing. No matter; it will be available somewhere in North America and Fed Ex was conveniently created to solve this problem. It will be mine! The lens covers the range of 16 to 300 mm and is compact and light. One lens will cover most circumstances... I'm going shopping.

Here are a few pictures of our first day of sightseeing.



Girls Hiking the Mountain
 
 


Bud's Toy



Bud, Chris and Theresa in Gondola

 



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