Beautiful BC

This year, Dan and I will be celebrating our 10-year wedding anniversary and with that, we thought what better reason to do a big holiday this year! My uncle lives in Princeton, British Colombia, and Dan has wanted to fly out and see this part of the world for some time. Combine these two factors and we had our family holiday destination for this year! Not liking to make things easy for myself, the day before we flew out to Vancouver, we also completed on the sale of our house in advance of us relocating to the north-east. What got me through that last week of packing was the thought of a refreshing drink as soon as we got through security at Gatwick – and boy did it taste good.

For the first week of our holiday, we travelled around the smallest fraction of BC, just the 4 of us. BC is situated between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Coast with the most popular areas to visit being Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler – all 3 of these featured in our first week.

After a 9.5 hour flight direct to Vancouver, our only aim for the first day was to stay up as long as possible to try and combat our jetlag. With this in mind, I booked us in for the Fly Over Canada experience – great if you have kids but quite expensive for how long it lasts.

We only had one full day in Vancouver, and we spent that at Grouse Mountain. With a complimentary shuttle bus departing from Canada Place every half an hour, this is easily accessible from the city centre. A must do for families and a great place to spend the whole day.

Upon leaving Vancouver, we collected a car from the airport that we had with us for the remainder of our holiday. If you are going to be travelling around, hiring a car is a great way to do it. We hired a larger SUV so that we could enjoy the views, and hopefully spot some wildlife, whilst we were doing the longer drives.

We travelled on to Vancouver Island and spent a few days here exploring the culture and heritage of the two places we stayed in. In Victoria we stumbled upon a great little diner for breakfast, Floyd’s Diner, which served great food and was popular with the locals – always a great sign! We spent the morning on a Whale Watching Tour hosted by Orca Spirit Adventures and were lucky enough to see three humpback whales swimming together. This is really unusual and the guides themselves rarely see this. A real bucket list moment! The guides were incredibly knowledgeable and really made the trip.

Back over to the mainland and we spent 2 nights at Whistler. The drive up from Vancouver is absolutely stunning! We stayed at the Adara Hotel, a modern boutique style hotel located in Whistler Village. Perfect location for walking up to the village hub within a minute or two with good facilities. Whistler is a year-round destination and whilst I was sitting in the village centre enjoying breakfast on our first morning, I could really get a sense of how it would feel being there in the winter. A lot busier than our previous couple of nights on the island, we threw ourselves into exploring the resort including a Treetop Trek Tour and riding the Peak 2 Peak Gondola between Blackcomb Mountain and Whistler Mountain.

Our week of exploring alone came to an end and we travelled from Whistler to Princeton where we met up with my uncle and his partner. They live roughly a 15-minute drive outside of the town in a beautiful lodge that they have built. Along with their 3 horses and 3 dogs, the time we spent there was idyllic. To read more about the 2 weeks we spent with them, read my next blog on BC!