Today we visit the right side of Stanley Park (the Stanley Park Causeway Rd cuts the park in two), just north of Vancouver.
Stanley Park is, for more than 100 years now, a famous nesting place for the non-migrating Pacific great blue heron. Patrick reeds in the local paper today that raccoons in Stanley Park are becoming a real plague. Since 2008 the raccoons found the nests of the herons and they steel the young birds to eat them. Together with the raccoons, the bald eagles and the owls are responsible for plundering 32% of the nests. This year, according to the report of 2009, about 100 peepers have disappeared from about 44 nests. In 2008 this was only 2 nests. This is not good for the heron’s population in the park.

We walk through the park and see a black squirrel taking something eatable (?) from the trashcan. For the first time we can see this kind closely as they do not really fear humans. Then we arrive at the “girl in the wetsuit”. A statue which looks much like the “little mermaid in Kopenhagen”. We look for the totem poles and after some searching we finally find them. After drinking something at the Totem Pole Café, we walk to Beaver Lake. It is so quiet here. We sit down on a bench and listen to a bird singing. Suddenly, from nowhere, appears a raccoon. He walks on the path, goes behind our bench where he notices us and then disappears in the high grass into Beaver Lake. A bit further we see a Swallowtail butterfly. After about 3h we leave Stanley Park and drive to Canada Place. There we walk around the promenade. Afterwards we go back to the hotel, park our car in the underground parking lot. We have a shower and prepare for a walk in the city. When we take the elevator to the lobby, we listen to a conversation between some people. They talk about a restaurant where they have great food. We ask them the name of that place. It seems to be the “Keg Caesars” just around the corner of our hotel on Dunsmuir St. So we walk to this restaurant! Apart of Sofie (which is a real meat lover and gets a good steak) we all take the lobster (of 1 kg) which is a great choice! Satisfied of the great food, offered to us by LuSo, we go back to the hotel and fall asleep very easily…

Daytrip approx. 9 km