Hello folks! I hope your new year is getting off to a good start. I’m sharing the second part of my Christmas in Vancouver postcards today. You can read Part I here if you missed it and fancy a nose!

Just after Christmas we took a trip to Stanley Park which is full of wildlife and scenery during the day, and Christmas lights and cheesy ornaments by night! For the holiday season the park is filled with two million twinkling lights, a train, fresh organic popcorn, roasted nuts and candy canes.

Stanley Park also houses the Vancouver Aquarium. We spent an entire day marvelling over the wonderful sea creatures and fishes and being seduced by the cutest otter in the world. I was so super chuffed to get this shot of a Beluga Whale.

On our final day in Canada, the SUN CAME OUT! I shout because it rained every single day and taking photos was hard. Our hosts had a lovely sky light in their apartment and seeing the blue sky through it in the morning made me yey for my photo album. Low cloud still covered the mountains across Coal Harbour, but it was fresh and beautiful out.

How cute is this little hut?! Although I did wonder how one would get up to it…..

The boat houses on the harbour were just lovely. It was like a home from home, as our close neighbours in Cambridge are long boat owners on the river. I spied a lovely blue bicycle on the left hand house too.

Plenty of walking balanced out the indulgent poutine (topped with pulled pork anyone?!). On the way home we passed houses with cute porches and a fun yellow cab.

Before we left for the airport, we found the darling little tea shop Soirette, full of loose tea, macarons, snowflakes and grinch tree decorations. It was so so so pretty. The boys just didn’t get why I was so excited hehe! I could spend hours in places like this with a book and a hook.

Naturally, Lauren and I bought a box of the most wonderful macarons to share. Maple and gingerbread flavours for the holidays of course. The sun beamed on the tea shop as we left to collect our cases and head home.

I’m now getting the case ready for another break to Center Parcs next week. We didn’t get a chance to take any long holidays in the summer last year, so we are making up for it now!

There will be a guest post on Monday on the theme of crochet, so all you hooky types be sure to stop by. Oh and one last thing, I did plenty of craft shopping and a shed load of crochet whilst away, so will do a ta-dah post soon!

Thanks for reading!