Back on solid ground...

What... I thought I saw a Brown Bear...I did, I did!
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An early start today - Our disembarkation time was 7:15am - but the ship was a little behind schedule so it ended up being 7:45am. We opted from the expedited check-out - which meant we had to handle our own luggage - which was fine by us as it meant we got off first and into the taxi line before everyone else. We nearly ran through customs it went so smoothly and we were at our hotel by about 8:10am - just a couple of blocks from the cruise terminal. The plan was to secure our bags with the porters for the day and head out - but they had a free upgrade room available which was great.

Capilano Suspension Bridge - thank god no honey here!
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At the cruise terminal we had asked about tours in Vancouver and the hostess had suggested a specific tour which would take up 6hrs starting at 10:30am - with pickup from our hotel. We opted for this and after booking - headed out for a brief walk to get you know what...  a cappucino.. at you know where.. Starbucks. It is Sunday here and nothing else seemed to be open at 9am in the morning except Starbucks - but anything is better than the coffee on the ship!

Hang on tight!

Totem poles at Capilano
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We wandered around for a bit and got back to the hotel in time for our tour pickup. The coach turned up and we got on board with the other 6 people doing the tour and headed out first to a salmon hatchery. We had already seen one of these but it was good to get inside the hatchery and read the info about the salmon lifecycle and the different types of salmon. The next stop was the Capilano Suspension Bridge. This is an amazing steel roped structure that spans a gorge and had been turned into a tourist attraction. You can walk across the bridge and feel slightly uncertain as the bridge sways back and forth from the weight of the other couple of hundred people on the bridge at the same time. Once on the other side they have a Tree Top suspended walkway system around the cypress trees that you can walk around. This was quite novel, but slow as everyone wanted to stop and take pictures of the friends and family.

Fish that spawn at the Hatchery
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After this stop it was on to Grouse Mountain. Here we rode the 8min cable car 3000 meters up the side of the mountain to the peak. You can opt to do the Grouse Grind - which is a hiking path up to the top - the record is 27mins. Once at the top it was recommended that we head first to the Lumberjack show that was starting soon after. The sun was beating down from a cloudless sky making it quite hot as the grandstand had no sun protection. Luckily Joe had packed the trusty sunscreen. This show was good - showing the skills of the lumberjacks of old, but also set to a comical script to entertain the audience. After this we headed over to the brown bear exhibit - two brown bears which are now housed in an enclosure on top of the mountain. They had been orphaned as cubs and are now looked after by the city. We were able to get within 10 meters of these large animals and left in awe of their size.

Joe along the Tree Tops suspended walkway
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After this is was over to the Birds in Motion show. Here 5 different trained birds were flown over the crowds heads. These included a young barn owl, a turkey hawke, a perigrin falcon and a bald eagle. The ranger was a little worried when a young toddler went running into the centre of the arena while the bald eagle was out flying. They were preparing to get it to chase a lure - and the toddler was a little big for that purpose!! After this us and the other thousand people all moved to the cable car to return to the base of the mountain at the same time. Luckily we had a tour group pass and moved to the front of the line!!

Grouse Mountain Cable Car
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Once at the base, we had a quick look at the 3 Timber Wolves that were housed in a pen near here. The two white and one black wolves are quite placid and looked a little like large scrawny dogs. The tour leader told us the story of the wolves, and how there used to be four of them. They used to be housed up the top of the mountain in the bear enclosure, as bears and wolves can co-exist quite happily. This is of course only of the wolves leave the bear food alone, which one did not, and was given a not so friendly swipe by one of the bears - then there were only three wolves, and they were moved to the only place there was space available - near the car park.

Thirsty Bear
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After being droped back at our hotel we headed out for dinner. We stopped at an Italian place on Robson St called CinCin. Even though this place looked a bit dressy, Vancouver is a casual city so there was no problem with us dressed in our day travel clothes. We ordered a main meal and crunched our way through a couple of freshly baked bread rolls and green olive tapenade. Joe ordered the Halibut fish and I the NZ rack of lamb. My lamb was mouthwatering. We decided on a small dessert - petit fours - this however consisted of 5 small tastings each, finished off by a small treat each compliments of the chef. I would highly recommend this restaurant to anyone visiting Vancouver.