February 2020
Lots of things to do.
Lanterns in Jack Poole Plaza
The format of this
lantern show was new to me - these are printed fabric lanterns (each
lantern design is printed twice) in a solid metal frame. These
lanterns are setup with a wonderful backdrop and we got a great blue
sky to contrast with the red colours. The kids brough their
puppets from Chinese new years.
Walking to School in the Snow
Of course the snow makes a great walk to school - every horizontal
surface contains the ingredients for a snowball.
Vancouver Boatshow
The boatshow is "must attend" event on our
spring calendar. The boatshow has two locations - Granville
Island and BC Place with a free water taxi between the two
locations. We can walk down to Granville Island, take in the
close by boats and then ride over to the BC Place and have more
fun there.
This year there were still spaces on the
boat tours and our kids were keen to go. The tour basically
takes you up and down false creek in either a power boat or a
sailboat. The kids asked for powerboat and I was quite
surprised when the captain let them drive! Apparently this
boat is worth more than a million dollars!
After the false creek tour, we took the free ferry over to
BC Place. The kids favorite activity is the bumper boats and
there was no line up!
The kids are now old enough that they don't
have a problem driving the paddle boats.
Nara had a birthday party in the afternoon
so we go her to her pickup and Claira and I spent more time
looking at boats. There are a wide variety of boats on the
floor - from dinghys to speedboats, fishing trawlers to
weekenders. We tried out a lot!
But all good days come to and end. We
took the ferry ferry back to Granville Island. We don't take
the sea bus around false creek very often (it is kind of expensive
compared to driving your own car) so watching the view from a new
angle is a lot of fun.
I'm worried that if I attend enough boat shows, I'll eventually
buy a boat. Worse things could happen.
Vancouver Aquarium
James's birthday is in February. For
his birthday he wanted to go to the Vancouver Aquarium so we met
up at lunch time to see the shows!
The four kids are roughly the same age so we let them mostly do
what they wanted. It was raining so we didn't see a lot of
the outdoor shows (we did see the sea lions in a break in the
rain). We did get into the 4D theater and watched a positive
film about how a park can improve the quality of life of people
living close by.
Maybe because it was cold - the kids really
enjoyed the amazon exhibit. They were feeding the
monkeys when we came through and the kids stayed for quite a bit
of it!
Illuminate Yaletown
I've been before - I went the first
time in
2009 and the second
in
2012 with Nara and Helen -
probably the first festival Nara ever went to. Illuminate
Yaletown isn't a big event - it's put on by the Yaletown Business
Improvement association and this year it was roughly a block
long.
The event had a mix live performance and light displays. the
first things the kids wanted to do when we arrived was play on the
swings, but the clown juggling lit balls also grabbed their
attention.
The kids have played with a
light bright before -
back in the PNE in 2017. The event had a giant light
bright hanging and boxes of plastic rods where kids could build
their own design. Our kids played for at least 10 minutes
and I'm sure they wished they had one of these at home.
At the far end of the street was a number
of large lit geometric shapes that were slowly changing color over
time. They weren't very interactive, but the large glowing
surfaces made for some nice backgrounds to selfies.
The kids found a glowing teeter totter
which they enjoyed playing on.
I must admit, I'm a sucker for live
performance. There were three women with lit up capes
walking around with photographers in tow. After we saw a
pair of performers with led nunchucks set with some very nice
patterns. The software in those was really slick - I'm
guessing it uses an accelerometer to determine how fast to play
out the pattern. With long exposures, the ribbons of light
were fantastic.
Probably the kids favorite was a dance performance put on by two
stilt walkers in amazing LED outfits. The outfits had a
great rotation of patterns and lights and the kids loved
interacting with the performers.
Birding Iona
Nature Vancouver has field trips most
weekend of the year. A Saturday morning birding walk
is a great way to start a weekend - time outside looking for
interesting things and hearing stores about wildlife. This
Saturday turned out to be beautiful (but cold) so I went out for a
walk. Both kids were invited, but neither of them wanted to
go with me.
While there were lots of ducks in the ponds, the ducks aren't
thrilled to see people and often swim away from the shore.
Small birds on the other hand are often working for a living and
for whatever reason can wind up quite close to people.
Tags: Yaletown(6), Iona Beach Regional Park(6), Vancouver Boat Show(4), lights(4), performance(3), lantern(3)
People: Nara(13), Claira(10), James(1), Marcus(1), Helen(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2024 to 2005 > February 2020
Last Modified Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 at 00:06:34 Edit
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