USA 🇺🇸& Canada🇨🇦 2019

We headed out to a cafe called Tractor Foods this morning for breakfast – excellent breakfast wraps.

Then off walking … discoverying the beautiful Art Deco Marine building on the way.

We then continued walking ….

…. (about 35 mins) headed to Granville Island – food markets, cafes and restaurant, craft markets and shops. It was fantastic! We caught this little ferry across (5mins)

Nick and Annie enjoyed a crepe; I had a coffee and pecan cinnamon scroll; Cate a blueberry lemon scone and punnet of mixed fruit and Nigel a plain bagel. All great!!

From Granville Island we walked to the Museum of Vancouver, through the snowy fields.

The Museum was excellent – interesting exhibits from the original aboriginal inhabitants, through to the settling of Vancouver, 20s, 50s, 60s displays.

We then walked back up town …. snowing quite hard by this stage – only part of me that was cold was my chin really! I enjoyed it!!

Another spot of shopping to finish the day before some downtime at the hotel.

We ate dinner again at another Cactus Club restaurant, just across the road from the hotel.

On our first day here, we tested out our rusty snow skills in the morning and then did a family lesson in the afternoon – the lesson was good but in hindsight it probably would have been better to do lessons individually as we are all at different levels.

Annie decided that skiing was not for her so she did some coffee shop relaxing time on our second day here and then spends restful mornings in bed and is honing her ice skating skills in the afternoons!

Up at 4:25 this morning for a 7:20 flight to Vancouver (Annie definitely not pleased with the early flight schedule!). An easy three hour flight with Air Canada.

We were picked up from Vancouver airport by a shuttle to take us to Whistler – Roy was our driver : he owns a bunch of accommodation in Whistler and many other businesses by the sounds of things – salt of the earth type fellow with lots of funny stories!

He dropped Cate and Nigel in Whistler village to get some groceries, while the rest of us continued up to the apartment – just 10 metres from the ski slope!

After unpacking and resting for a bit, we walked back down to the village for a drink for Nigel’s birthday before returning to the villa for dinner.

We decided on an early start this morning as we only had one day in LA. 7am breakfast in the hotel cafe and off to hike the Hollywood Hills! We took a Lyft (ride share taxi like Uber) to the Griffith Observatory for some great views.

We had thought we would hike to the Hollywood sign but took some different trails – that way we could keep it in view rather than getting too up close!

It was really peaceful up there – quite a few people but not too crowded : it was much busier especially when we left at around 10:30 so the early start was worth it.

We returned to the hotel to change and set off for the second activity – the Petersen Motor Museum. Interesting set of cars – many from movies.

We had lunch in a restaurant attached to the museum – very nice birthday lunch!

From here we took another Lyft (everything is so far away in LA) to Rodeo Drive for a stroll.

And then down to Santa Monica Pier.

A lot of people down there but something that particularly Annie wanted to see.

Back to the hotel again (early evening by this time) – we had a light bite to eat and then off to an NBA (basketball) game – LA Lakers v Detroit Pistons. Great fun – but we decided we liked the Ice hockey slightly better as a game to go to.

Morning walk – Nick and I (Cate and Nigel biked) … so beautiful down the Californian coast.

We enjoyed the included breakfast at the hotel, packed up and headed for the Getty Villa (I booked ahead this time!) … about 1.5 hrs drive from Santa Barbara. The Villa is a recreation of an ancient Roman country house – J. Paul Getty had it built as a replica of Villa dei Papiri. When planning for the construction of the Getty Villa in the 1970s, architects looked closely at the partial excavation of the Villa dei Papiri and at other ancient Roman houses in Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae to influence the design. The scale, appearance, and some of the materials of the Getty Villa are taken from the Villa dei Papiri, as is the floor plan, though it is a mirror of the original.

Cate and I did a guided architecture tour – more about Roman houses and life than architecture but still very interesting.

We had a light lunch and headed into Los Angeles … and the dreaded traffic!

We unloaded at the hotel and then poor Nigel and Annie had the job of driving to the airport to drop the car off and get back to the hotel … 2 hour round trip!! (Cate, Nick and I enjoyed complementary wine hour at the hotel 😀!!