CANADA
We got married! On August 22, 2021 Max and I had a beautiful, intimate ceremony with just friends and family. After our wedding was over we hit the road and went on a lovely trip to Victoria, BC.
In todays episode I take you through our time in Victoria! You’ll notice in the video I take you through our trip chronologically, but below I’ve organized the photos into categories.
After some time not travelling we finally hit the road for a mini roadtrip to Osoyoos!
Osoyoos Desert Centre: The Desert Centre is a 67-acre nature interpretive facility, where you get to explore Canada’s, The Okanagan’s Desert (popularly referred to as Canada’s pocket desert). This area is a semi-arid, antelope brush ecosystem and is quite rare and fragile. It’s operated by the Osoyoos Desert Society that is dedicated to conserving the biodiversity.
The Desert Centre offers self-guided and guided tours - if you do the self-guided tour route they provide you with a booklet that details different aspects of the centre - wildlife, ecosystem, plant facts, etc.,
Throughout the boardwalk you’ll run into signs that inform you on different topics like desert life, threatened or extinct species, how the ecosystem works, etc.,
Wineries: The Okanagan Valley is HUGE on wine. In the valley alone there are 300+ wineries with the Osoyoos, Oliver area home to 50+ wineries. We only hit 10 wineries during our visit. These were our favourite:
Platinum Bench
Burrowing Owl
Moon Cursor
Black Hill Estate Winery
French Door
Canada’s Best Home Hardware: You read that correct! The Osoyoos Home Hardware was voted Canada’s Best Home Hardware. This place was stuffed with something for everyone. If you need a floatie for a hot day, board game, kitchen supply, knick knack for a gift you might something at the Osoyoos Home Hardware.
This mini trip to Osoyoos was amazing! There was a ton of stuff we missed so I look forward to going back, perhaps in the Spring or Fall next time.
We were supposed to get married a couple weeks ago but COVID-19 made us post-pone our wedding to the following year. Instead my fiance and I took a mini-trip to Vancouver, Canada for the weekend.
We spent 4 days exploring Vancouver City and here are the highlights from our trip, recommendations for activities, and travel tips!
Explore the streets of Granville Island and the Public Market. Granville Island is a peninsula and shopping district of Vancouver. Located south of Downtown Vancouver and the Granville Street Bridge. Here you can find fine art galleries, shops, entertainment, and food vendors.
Adventures at the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. This park is a very popular attraction of North Vancouver. Here you can cross the Capilano River via the suspension bridge, explore the canopy treetops and brave the Cliffwalk.
Explore the underwater world of the Vancouver Aquarium. The aquarium is home to over 30 unique exhibits one of which that is special to my heart the Marine Mammal Rescue.
Marine Mammal Rescue is Canada's only dedicated marine mammal rescue facility and one of the largest in the world. They rescue, rehabilitate and release all sorts of marine mammals - seals, sea lions, turtles, sea otters and cetaceans.
My favourite seals that they rescued were Pygmy and Fragola.
*NOTE: Since drafting this post the Vancouver Aquarium has announced that it will pause its public programming starting on September 8th (after Labour Day). Essential personnel will remain and programs by Ocean Wise will continue without interruption.
Take an evening stroll and dinner around Gastown. Gastown is one of Vancouver's oldest neighbourhoods. Gastown is known for its whistling steam clock, assortment of shops and restaurants.
Created motion by using a slow shutter speed
Double exposure using an Olympus camera
Foreground blur using a leaf off the ground
Used my phone to create a mirror of the steam clock
Get some exercise at Stanley Park. This public park has several trails and walking/biking paths that either take you through the forest or along the waters edge.
I had such a great time photographing the Vancouver Lions Gate Bridge!
Visit Vancouvers iconic landmark, Canada Place. Home to the Vancouver Convention Centre, Pan Pacific Hotel, and Vancouver World Trade Centre. Across from Canada Place are some restaurants that are perfect for an afternoon snack.
It was here that I got to try out double exposures!
Shop till you drop at one of Vancouvers many shopping malls. There are a variety of shopping centre's such as Metropolis at Metrotown, CF Pacific Centre Mall, Oakridge Centre Mall, etc.
Whenever my mom and I went to Vancouver we would spend hours (sometimes days) shopping. On this trip we stuck to visiting attractions rather than shopping.
General Tips:
Here are some general tips for your trip to Vancouver!
Be prepared to pay for parking everywhere! We downloaded the Pay by Phone App which made paying for parking super easy. You can enter your vehicles information and pay for your time that way - no machines, no tickets, no running back to your vehicle because your time is almost up. We found majority of places we visited had a Pay by Phone option.
Dress in layers for constantly changing weather. The weather in Vancouver can change constantly - one day it started off cloudy and then got hot.
Understand where you want to visit and choose a hotel that is close to those areas and within your budget. Majority of the sites we wanted to visit were in the Downtown Vancouver area so we chose a hotel in Downtown Vancouver - that way our drive to places was no more than 15 minutes.
Public transit - we did not have to use public transit when we were in Vancouver. We live 4.5 hours away by car so we drove to Vancouver. If you are not I suggest doing your research regarding public transit in Vancouver.
Be respectful and responsible. When we were in Vancouver we carried a small bottle of hand sanitizer and face masks. Some attractions like the Aquarium we had to wear face masks. Be cognizant of your surroundings, wash your hands often, and be respectful of other people’s space.
Google maps or an offline map is your friend. Vancouver streets can be confusing if you are not used to driving in a big city or Vancouver in general so have some sort of mapping software to help get you through.
Where to Stay:
Max and I aren't super picky when we choose a hotel. We don't typically stay in 5 star resorts because we spend most of our time outside exploring. We just look for locations that are clean, affordable (less than $100/night), and centrally located.
For us that ended up being Sandman Suites Vancouver - Davie Street.
We got a deal for our room and it ended up being around $70/night.
Our hotel room had a gorgeous city view of Downtown Vancouver, full kitchen, queen bed and pull-out bed, and was centrally located to so many great restaurants!
Last week my fiance and I decided to take a spontaneous trip down to the Town of Banff and Lake Louise! We left Fort McMurray on Friday at 5:30 PM and arrived in Banff at around 2:30 AM. It was a slow weekend of just strolling around, no agenda, no timetable just a weekend away.
On Saturday we attempted to visit Lake Louise. According to the Banff & Lake Louise travel page the best time to visit Lake Louise is before 9:00 AM or after 6:00 PM. We went at the worst time but we opted to sleep in a little because we got in so late. We arrived at Lake Louise around noon, grabbed a coffee at Trailhead Cafe and walked around the river for a bit. Lake Louise was packed with no parking so we decided to come back later in the evening in the hopes it would calm down.
When we got into Banff we grabbed lunch, because we had Pepsi we needed to find a pet-friendly restaurant and after much walking around and searching we found Bear Street Tavern which had a pet-friendly patio. I had a delicious Baja Shrimp Tacos and Max had a Pesto Chicken Pizza.
After lunch we strolled around Banff and took a walk along the Bow River. Just before we went on this trip I stopped by the local photography store in Fort McMurray Foto Source and picked up a Manfrotto Element Big Aluminum Tripod. I wanted to try and capture more self-portraits of Max, myself and Pepsi on this trip. The photos of us on the bench were taken by setting the tripod up behind us, setting my Olympus EM1 Mark II to continuous with 7-10 frames every 5 seconds. They turned out pretty great for the first time!
Before the day ended we had to go back and try getting into Lake Louise! We drove back out around 8:00 PM and I’m so glad we did because Lake Louise was empty! It was so beautiful with the turquoise water and the misty mountains in the back.
The pictures of Max and myself were all taken by setting up my Manfrotto tripod with the Olympus EM1 Mark II set to continuous. I absolutely loved this feature about the Olympus system because instead of constantly running back and forth to reset the timer and only capture one pose you can set it for how many frames you want and the interval in-between and it will continue to take photos until the frame count is up.
Our spontaneous weekend getaway to Banff & Lake Louise was amazing! I hope you enjoyed and see you in the next post!