A Honeymoon In Vancouver

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A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Capilano Suspension Bridge Park

Can you believe it friends??? I’m married! I am married to my best friend and love of my life, who I get to pursue, love, and walk through life with for the rest of our lives. Our wedding day was such a wonderful time of commitment, love, and time with everyone that we love. It was a bit of a whirlwind, but it was an amazing whirlwind. Everything turned out better than I could have ever expected, and I can’t believe that at the end of the day Stephen and I were finally married! (I’ll be doing a complete post on my wedding day once I get more of the pictures from our photographer.) 

 

The Monday after our wedding Stephen and I got to embark on a fun adventure to Vancouver, Canada, which was our first plane trip and international trip together. We woke up bright and early in the morning ready to head off in the unknown together, even though our eyes were drooping with tiredness. We both ended up sleeping almost the entire time of both flights, which was a welcome rest for the craziness of the few days before. The nice part of flying out early in the morning, was that we were in Vancouver before noon and had the whole day to spend in the city.

 

For the most part, our journey was without any hiccups or complications, until we tried to buy tickets for the subway to get to downtown Vancouver. Amidst the craziness of our wedding day we didn’t remember to file a travel form with our bank until the night before. Lesson we learned: always do this a few days before leaving otherwise you might end up in another country without access to your debit or credit card. Such a big goof on our part! Thankfully we had brought a hundred dollars in cash with us, and were able to exchange it for Canadian money. Praise the Lord we had that! With our minimal amount of Canadian money, we were able to buy passes for the transit system to get to our Air B&B and the grocery store to pick up groceries. Then we ended up hanging out in our Air B&B till our card was useable again the next day. Once we had access to that, the adventure began!

 

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden

Our first major tourist stop was the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden, which is a traditional Chinese Garden built in the early 1900s in the middle of Vancouver’s China Town. The garden was commissioned by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, one of the most well known scholars and politicians from his era, who wanted to create a bridge between the Eastern and Western worlds. He brought over 950 crates of Chinese materials to create the garden using ancient Chinese building methods that didn’t use machinery, screws, or any modern building techniques. The end result of the garden is absolutely stunning. Every part of it was built with intention to capture the relationship of Yin and Yang, in order to have a complete balance to the garden design. It is so much fun to wander through the garden to try and find all of the design features that represent Yin and Yang. Stephen and I kept finding little things that we’d notice represented one side or the other, and got so excited when we could connect them! Below are some of our favorite pictures from the garden:

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden
Pictured is part of the courtyard floor of the garden. Notice the different colors and textures of the river rock that showcase the light and dark nature of Yin and Yang.

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden
This is a double sided silk embroidery screen done in the early 1900s. It’s one piece of silk fabric with identical pictures on both sides. I stared at this piece for 10 minutes admiring the incredible talent and skill that went into creating this piece.

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden
This archway is represents a doorway into heaven, and uses its curved shape to represent Yin.

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden
In one part of the garden we got to draw Chinese characters, and we chose to draw the character for family since Stephen and I are officially family now!

 

Capilano Suspension Bridge Park

Our second favorite stop on our trip was to the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park that showcases a giant suspension bridge strung over a beautiful gorge in the Vancouver rainforest. This park is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. The forest is stunning with its lush plants and tall trees, and in the rain it is completely magical. Besides the main suspension bridge, the park features a treetop village where you walk amongst the trees, a cliff walk where you walk on a bridge that is suspended from a cliffside that is a few hundred feet above the forest floor below, and a nature walk that showcase the majestic beauty of the Vancouver rainforest. Stephen and I were also really excited because we got to see the park all lit up with Christmas lights strung amongst the trees as they began decorating for their major Christmas event that runs late November through December. It was absolutely magical! I am so glad that we did this splurge to go to this park, because it was worth every penny we spent on it. One of my all time favorite places to visit ever and probably my favorite stop we made on our honeymoon!

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Capilano Suspension Bridge Park
Here’s a photo of us on the Cliff Walk, and you can see the main suspension bridge behind us.

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Capilano Suspension Bridge Park
On the cliffwalk we ventured out on the part that lies over 200 feet above a river, and over 30 feet from the cliffside. You stand on a metal suspended walkway that is surrounded by metal and class fencing. It’s pretty crazy!

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Capilano Suspension Bridge Park
A view of the main suspension bridge and how long it stretches on for!

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Capilano Suspension Bridge Park
Here’s a picture of the treetop village, which has bridges strung between different trees and lie quite a ways above the ground. It feels like you’re in Endor from Star Wars!

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Capilano Suspension Bridge Park
Some of the lights they had in the treetops were giant Christmas light balls. I was pretty excited about them!

 

Other Fun Stops!

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Other Fun Stops

One of our favorite surprising finds we found while riding on the bus around the city, was the oldest church in Vancouver. The church is stunning with it’s classic architecture, and dozens of stained glass windows that date back to the mid 1800s that were dedicated to family members that passed or those that died during World War 2 in the 1940s. It was an amazing step into history and to view the artwork and detail put into each window picture. There was also an incredible art project they had on display the was created by parishioners of the church. Dozens of parishioners picked their favorite prayers or verses, and then created dozens of tiles that displayed them. Each til is made from old choir robes that were then embroidered or screen printed with the prayers and verses written on them. The thought and love that went into this project is stunning, and as a fiber artist I loved getting to see that style of artwork!

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Oldest Church in Vancouver Art project
Art project from parishioners from the oldest church in Vancouver.

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Wet Coast Wools

Of course I had to find a local Vancouver yarn store to stop in, and found this lovely little gem called Wet Coast Wools in the Kitsilano district of Vancouver! I got some beautiful hand dyed yarn that I’m going to use to make a shawl to remember our honeymoon by.

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Drexel Games

We found an amazing board game store, named Drexel Games, across the street from the yarn store, which was pretty much the board game store of our dreams. We were in awe at all of the games they had! I’m pretty sure we wanted to buy all of them.

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Van Dusen Botanical Gardens

On Halloween we went to the Van Dusen Gardens Glow the Night Halloween event. They decorated the garden with themed Hansel and Gretel decorations, Christmas lights, and dozens of pumpkins. It was such a fun thing to do on Halloween, and of course we had to pose in front of this giant donut.

 

The Food

We can’t forget about the food we had! We managed to find all of our favorite foods ranging from waffles, tacos, pies, pizza, and more. So much delicious food!

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Ludica Pizza

Our favorite food stop we found was Pizzeria Ludica, which was a pizzeria that had 700+ board games you could play while eating pizza. It was our dream dinner location with two of our favorite things: pizza and board games! Here we are playing our favorite board game Carcassone while eating a pizza named after it! We loved it so much that we went there twice.

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Nero Waffle Bar

Waffles are another favorite thing of ours, and we found a place called Nero Waffle Bar that was dedicated to waffles. I had an amazing waffle with apple pie filling and whip cream, and Stephen got a French Toast waffle. They were so yummy!

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver - Peaked Pies

One of the other fun things we found was a pie bakery that makes traditional Australian pies. Friends, we tried a Kangaroo pie… I can’t believe that I actually ate Kangaroo. It tastes like ground beef, and you have to keep telling yourself it is otherwise you think too hard about it and start tasting the fur. Though it was yummy, I don’t think I’d want to eat it again, haha.

 

A Honeymoon in Vancouver

Overall, we had an amazing honeymoon! We learned how to master the transit system, walked a ton, explored the city, saw some amazing gardens, adventured through a forest, and spent so much time together. It was a wonderful way to start our honeymoon, and I am so thankful to be married to Stephen and getting to adventure with him!

 

Until next time,

~Claire