Canada: Kits Beach, Granville Island, and our Floating House

    The t-shirt for this day would be,

"Be Happy."

      When we got off our train, we were ready to be off.  18 hours on a train is a long time, though I think it was a lot easier than driving or flying.  You can move around so much.  And, of course, let's not forget the people you meet along the way.  Ellen reminded me of the man that every time they asked him where he was from, he would say, "My mom.  Cause really, that is where we are all from."  Classic.  This was our first day in Vancouver, and as it turns out, Vancouver suited us all just fine.



      We waited in the train station while John got the rental car, and the girls entertained the masses with their cuteness.  (this was another theme of the trip, but I will write more about it in another post.)



Since we had some time to kill before checking into our pad, we went to Kitsilano Beach for lunch and treats and taking it all in.  We got to see some starfish in the wild (you know, the wild of a beach in a city), which we later discovered was super common around Vancouver, and we very much enjoyed our first taste of the city.










After that, we headed to our new place.  We stayed in a great place in Canmore with mountain views all around and a hot tub on the roof, however, this floating house took the prize with its uniqueness and all around awesomeness.  It is a house, floating, in a marina, with mountain views on one side and views of Vancouver's skyline on the other.  Amazing.  As the man checked us in, he kept saying, "Be Happy," and I thought, "that will not be a problem here."  Here's a few pics of the place - if you ever want more details, just ask.  I found it on VRBO (which I talked about in this post), and it was way less expensive than it would have been to stay in a hotel.  What a deal, and what a view.









That night, we headed to Granville Island to go to the Public Market for dinner.  This place was amazing.  There were fresh food vendors of all types and varieties everywhere.  It was almost more than we could take in.  We quickly decided we should all just buy food from wherever we wanted for dinner and meet at the end to eat.  The selection was mind-blowingly good and beautiful to boot.



(as you can imagine, I only ate fresh carrots.)





I love taking places like this in and the experience that it is - fantastic.  We thought about eating every meal there but had a feeling we would probably be missing out if we didn't visit the rest of Vancouver.  It made us very happy.