The Greater Vancouver Zoo is located about 50 km east of Vancouver and took us about 45 minutes to drive there. While it was nice and sunny yesterday, it was a bit colder than usual (about 10 degrees C). This turned out to be a blessing in disguise as there was far fewer people at the zoo. I suspect that during the summer time, the place must be really packed. Since our last trip in Eastern Canada last September, I had not really done a huge amount of picture taking and I was quite anxious to try out me long range zoom lens that I had bought specifically for our upcoming Africa trip. In yesterday’s trip, there were a lot of opportunities to use the new lens at it’s maximum and I have to say that I’m really happy with it.

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For those of you who are interested in the technical details of the photography, here is some information for you. All of my pictures were taken with my Nikon D300 and a Nikkor 70-300 f4.5-5.6 VR lens. On my DX format digital camera this gives me about the 35mm equivalent of 105-450mm and most of the pictures were taken with the lens at the maximum 300mm. Shooting hand held with the lens at this focal length would have been nearly impossible were it not for the VR (vibration reduction) feature of this lens. Most of the shots were taken hand held without any tripod or support. About 25% were taken with the lens resting on the wire fence if the holes in the fence were large enough to allow this and I brought my small bean bag that I also used for a few shots. I was recording the images in raw (Nikon NEF) set to 12 bit and compressed. This was producing a 10MB file for every shot. My camera was set to Program automatic mode and manually set to 400 ISO. For some shots, I would manually override the Program mode.

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My pictures from our zoo trip can be seen here. Baden

 

Deep Cove is a small village at the eastern end of North Vancouver right by Indian Arm (which is a Marine Regional Park) and in summer time or other sunny days becomes an incredibly popular destination to visit.

I have been to Deep Cove about 4 or 5 times and almost all of these times during the summer time and never as early as March. However with temperatures around 12 degrees and sunny today, I was not surprised to see so many people there. Admittedly, there were no crowds picnicing or barbecuing like there would be during the summer months but when we stopped for a coffee at around 12:30 there was a lineup right out the door.

Undoubtedly, the major drawing factor for people coming to Deep Cove is the view across Indian Arm. The official name for the park located at Deep Cove is Panorama Park and the name is well deserved given the spectacular vista that can be seen from the beach.

If you’re planning on visiting Deep Cove during the summer time (especially on a weekend), I highly recommend that you don’t wait until too late in the day as finding parking can be a challenge. However, I consider Deep Cove to be one of those places that you should make a point of visiting at least once – if not many times, during good weather.

Baden

As you might imagine with me just coming back from Germany just over a month ago, German foods are more in my mind than usual but so it isn’t unusual that Barb and I would go to checkout a place called European Speciality’s Warehouse last weekend.

Located near the entrance to Chinatown on 220 Prior St. at Main St., I had been told about European Speciality’s Warehouse by a friend that I work with who goes there on a regular basis. I had actually gone to European Speciality’s twice before I went with Barb and on both occasions didn’t get there early enough as they close at 1PM on Saturdays.

While Barb and I explored the products on the shelves, Barb would stop every few feet and point out some product that her parents used to buy when she was growing up. In case you’re wondering, Barb’s parents bought a lot of German stuff on a regular basis.

We ended up picking up several items from European Speciality’s Warehouse but one of the items in particular is a cheese that happens to be a favourite of Barb’s mother which called hartzkäse (which means cheese from Hartz region of Germany).

Sidebar: When Barb and I first when to Germany together in 2001, Barb’s mother Ruth asked us to bring her some hartzkäse from Germany. We did bring it back to Vancouver but it got confiscated at the airport by Canada Customs people. To say that Ruth was disappointed is a huge understatement.

Although it took 5 years, we finally got Ruth her hartzkäse that we bought for her from European Specialty’s and she was definitely happy to get it.

Baden

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European Speciality’s Warehouse
220 Prior St., Vancouver
604-688-9528

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While it’s been almost ten days since I returned home from Germany, I find that it always seems much longer and that my memories of just being in Europe a week and a half ago are quickly being pushed into the background of my mind by the day to day demands of life.

I think that part of this is the fact that with us vacationing in Europe fairly regularly (this Germany trip my 8th visit in 12 years), that many aspects of Europe are becoming less and less foreign to us. As a result, when we come home it’s not so much of a feeling that we have been on a trip of a lifetime but more have visited a second home for a short time. Europe will continue to play a large part in our future vacation plans but for the next two years we have plans to explore some different parts of the world so it may be a few years before we return back again.

I arrived home from Germany on a Friday which in itself is quite unusual (as I usually arrive much closer to getting back to work) and even unusual in that it was a long weekend so I had almost four full days to recover before returning back to work. But as everyone knows there’s nothing like returning back to work to bring the harsh reality that the vacation is truly over just like splashing cold water on your face.

Since the weather was so good last weekend when I returned back to Vancouver, Barb and I decided that we both wanted to spend some time together (a commodity in precious short supply in the previous four weeks with both of us doing our separate vacations) so we decided to make a day of going downtown to walk around the seawall around Coal Harbour.

Coal Harbour is on the north side of downtown Vancouver just east of Stanley Park and like Yaletown, is one of the relatively new areas being built up in the downtown area. Since Barb and I had made several trips to Yaletown during the summer and walked around the False Creek side of the seawall many times, we decided to walk along the north side by Coal Harbour for a change.

Starting just east of Stanley Park, the seawall at Coal Harbour stretches for several kilometres up to Canada Place. There were still several cruise ships in port when we walked by Canada Place last weekend but in a few weeks they will have all moved south for the season until next spring.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the walk along the Coal Harbour seawall compared the False Creek side is the spectacular view of the mountains on the North Vancouver side across Burrard Inlet. On a sunny day like last Saturday, the view is really hard to beat and reminds me of why so many people from around the world that we talk to tell me that they would love to visit Vancouver.

Baden