Vancouver & West Vancouver – Lighthouse Park
My FB was spamming me for the last few weeks about one thing that caught my attention – a thrill ride called FlyOver, where you are immersed in a 360 degree film with 4D effects (wind, scent, etc) and your seat moves like a roller coaster, as you “fly over” Canada. It was right at the port of Vancouver. We went, and it was a beautiful day! Notice the strange rare sighting of sunshine? So fun! What you can’t see is when you fly through the mist or cloud, you feel the mist! You fly over the prairies, you can smell the grasses! It’s amazing. As they make you feel like you are skimming over the surface I felt like I needed to lift up my feet to keep them from hitting the trees/fence posts/etc. What was the downside? Parking cost us $25! Ouch. Add the tickets for the ride – another $50, lunch $35. Mmmm – good thing we don’t play tourist every day!
After that we walked over to Gastown and played tourist and wandered through the shops. What I noticed was an amazing amount of indigenous art everywhere. It is just part of everything – you see the designs worked into the scenery from the sound barriers along the highways, in store fronts, in public walkways. So yes, I took a bunch of cool photos, and something followed me home even though I really don’t have space in my suitcase and now I’m going to have to wear 3 shirts to make space for my purchases.
Next we headed off to West Vancouver to see a lighthouse, and – you guessed it – go hiking!
Lighthouse Park caught my attention for a couple of reasons – it is still a working lighthouse, and it has some original Old Growth trees there in the park! But most of the final week of our trip was calling for RAIN. Again. Still. We managed to book it in on a day that it was just supposed to rain in the morning, and then clear up for the afternoon. The weather completely cooperated with our plans for a change! It was sunny and clear all day whooohooooo! Unfortunately we had to pay for parking – again! Another $10 for 2 hours. But what a great place to walk/hike/climb and of course take a million photos.
To get there we crossed from downtown through Stanley Park (what a beautiful drive!), and then we were in West Vancouver, where you could see unique houses built into the side of the mountain. I can imagine how the views were from up there, looking across at the city. I was very much the tourist, taking photos out the window everywhere! Fyi, yes, I went home and looked it up on realtor.ca to see what those places were worth in that area. What I saw was the cheapest place currently listed is priced at $1.6 million, and the most expensive place is listed at $58.8 million. Yeouch! Ok, really – I have to find a pet sit in that neighborhood!!!
Just for comparison, the community we are staying in has townhouse condos for sale for about $650k. They are really cute, but most of them don’t have driveways big enough to park in (not even if you have a SmartCar.) The lowest price places listed for sale right now are for $199k, and they go up to $12 million. Quite the range. However anything under $400k is a trailer. And from $400 - $500k is a condo with only 1 bedroom. Bigger townhomes can be found up to about a million, and we start to see a few detached older homes. Interestingly, at the $3 million mark there are a lot of “development opportunities” with bare lots or tear downs but considered in really great locations where a condo building could go.
