Last day in Vancouver

That's the tower we stayed in.


Last meal at the Westin Bayshore.

Orloffs

Rebecca and I went to law school together, and then she moved to Los Angeles. But about a year or so ago, she and her family moved to Bellingham, Washington, and her husband Andrew now works in Vancouver. Rebecca agreed to drive her kids up to Vancouver so that we all could have dinner together at the hotel restaurant.

The kids: Anders, Kayla, Isaac, Soren and Owen.


And the parents.

Totems at Stanley Park

ice cream on Granville Island

Marla

Marla and I used to work together in the Google Legal department, way back when. Now she works in Vancouver, and so we got a chance to have lunch together on Granville Island.

silkworms

At the silk weaving studio on Granville Island, they have actual silkworms!

Here are some eggs.


And some silkworms.


Here's a bunch of silkworm cocoons.


Here's a cocoon after the silk moth (this one, a variety that produces yellow silk) has come out.


If you're going to make silk out of it, you don't actually let the moth come out, because the moth has to break through the cocoon. Instead, you boil the cocoon before the moth emerges, and then you can unravel the approximately 1000 meters of silk thread that makes up each cocoon.

Hawksworth

Thanks to babysitting from Grammy and Grandpa, we got to have a date night in Vancouver.

Spirit Catcher Train at Klahowya Village

The Stanley Park train (which becomes the Spirit Catcher Train at Klahowya Village during the summer) ranks right up there with the Maui Sugar Cane Train for excitement (read: it's slow), but Soren still wanted to ride again when we were done.

storytelling at Klahowya Village

craft workshop at Klahowya Village

Learning to make cedar bracelets.

Stanley Park lunch

No pics of the lunch itself (one of many hot dog lunches), but the dessert was appreciated by the boys.

Vancouver Aquarium

When you live near the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it almost ruins other aquariums. But not the Vancouver Aquarium!

The Vancouver Aquarium opened a new jellyfish exhibit in May, so we saw lots of jellyfish to start.



Further inside, there were a series of aquariums that each reflected a different part of BC. I can't say that the adults really got to explore this in depth, but it was cool.




A few of the aquariums had sturgeon.


We also saw a bunch of frogs.



And a couple of dolphins.



And some penguins.



But the thing we had never seen before in person was beluga whales. There's a mother and a baby at the Vancouver Aquarium!





Anders also got a shark and a fish painted on his arm.