Beautiful British Columbia indeed!
I’m going to cheat a little bit on two things.
First, this is supposed to be a travel blog, and I really should only post for trips I’ve taken abroad, but this post is going to be about an area close to where I was born. I live overseas now in Beijing, but I was born in Vancouver, Canada, a stunningly beautiful and peaceful part of the world.
Second, I always limit each post to one city, but I’m going to mix this one up a bit and include a few pictures from Vancouver and several more from where I took a short vacation with my family in Gibsons in the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia.
Let’s start with Vancouver because if you intend on visiting the Sunshine Coast, there’s a good chance you’ll transit through Vancouver. If you do, I highly recommend spending some time in this beautiful city, full of great food and endless natural scenery.
Every journey to Vancouver should start with a trip downtown and around Stanley Park. Coming back to my hometown where I spent 29 years of my life, I never tire of this amazing park in the heart of the city. If you time it right, you can see glorious sunsets off English Bay and the Burrard Inlet as you walk, run, or bicycle around the park. The full route around the park is 10km and well worth the effort.
Another great spot for walking around is Yaletown and the Olympic Plaza area across False Creek. It’s really shocking how much has changed over the years down there, but it still pales in comparison to the rapid development I see every year in China. Entire cities are built from dirt in a matter of years in China, rather than decades back home in Canada.
Switching gears now, we took a short 40 minutes drive to the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal and took a 45 minutes ferry to Langdale, British Columbia. Upon arriving at Langdale, our VRBO.com house was only a short 10 minutes drive away. Every year, my family gets together in a rented house from Airbnb or VRBO and this year we decided to get one with a water view.
Not far from the house, Gibsons Landing, the town centre has a vast array of foodie destinations. Many of the restaurants are waterfront which perfectly sets the mood for a relaxing evening out with family or friends. One place we particularly enjoyed was a coffee shop called Beachcomber Coffee. Truth be told, we came here every single day during the trip because the coffee is that good. I also fell hard for their Doffle (a doughnut waffle!).
I’m not a video person in any way, but I think the house we rented deserves some coverage; I’ve put a short drone video up on YouTube. We rented it via VRBO and found the location to be incredible. The house itself must have been a party house at some time in its past because the interior setup is clearly designed for hosting large numbers of people.
The house faces east, and for those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you know that I’ve become enamoured with sunrises overlooking oceans and lakes. This house’s location did not disappoint, with stunning sunrises for two of the five days we were there.
The Sunshine Coast is famous for its outdoor activities with a nearly endless choice of hiking and mountain biking trails. Since this was a family trip with my older parents, we chose to visit a nearby par that has a wide variety of easy, medium, and hard trails. Cliff Gilker Park turned out to be a great way to spend a few hours with the family, while taking in the beauty and power of nature.
The next morning, we awoke to another gorgeous sunrise and decided to visit Beachcomber Coffee again before going on another hike. This time it was just the two of us, so we decided to go for a bit more difficult hike and climb up to the top of Soames Hill. The view at the top was definitely worth the medium effort of the climb!
Since this was a family trip, 99% of the images I took were of family, and I don’t think they’d appreciate me posting portraits of them online; I would have loved to have taken more scenic images, but the ones above will have to do for this time; I will however visit the Sunshine Coast again one day as a pure tourist and can’t wait to see this beautiful part of the world again.
