The Most Beautiful City in the World

Vancouver is by far the most beautiful city in the world. It doesn't have the most superb architecture, it doesn't have an amazing night life - but what it has is pure unadulterated beauty in every direction. It doesn't get much better than the scenery of sloping, peaking and shrouded mountains. Below is a view of the Lion's Gate Bridge that spans the water between Stanley Park in the City Centre of Vancouver and North Vancouver on the other side.

The mountains are everywhere. I think I'd like to move to Vancouver for a while - maybe a few months. Anything is possible right now, so we'll just see how it goes finding my replacement in the mountainless Mississauga-based Canadian National Office...
Well, Jessica and I were in Vancouver for the training of short-termers heading out to Thailand, Japan, China and the Philippines. Fun times with some good kids. We had all the strenuous training sessions speckled with outdoor activity - because, please - could you not!? I mean, we were surrounded by this breathtaking beauty in all directions and there was just no chance that we were locking ourselves indoors for the weekend. We had team building in Stanley Park, spontaneous cross-cultural training at English Bay (where we sat with two Japanese girls, a handful of rambunctious Latinos, miriads of Hapkido flipping flying-fist Asians - and I think a Torontonian or two - waiting for fireworks that never happened) and worship experiences in the great outdoors that topped any that could have been led via PowerPoint...

Then we sent our workers off to Asia. We, of course, were jealous and wanted to join them, but duty calls and we have been set to work here for the time being...

We decided to take Tuesday off and relax - so we climbed the Grouse Grind.

Whenever did the idea pop into our head that told us that relax and climb the Grouse Grind were actually somehow equivalent...??
Yeah, so, we nearly died.

However, the views were worth the two hour journey...

For the most part it was a vertical hike and when we got to the summit it was pouring rain and we were walking through cloud cover. We'll have to do it again on a sunny day...

We were so tired, drained, sweating, heaving, aching and all-round pooped that this is what happened afterwards:

Our brains nearly turned to mush - but our bodies felt fantastically exhausted! What an experience!

You'll be pleased to know that I slept well that night - finally - even without the jaw-preserving device. I guess I just have to 'do the grind' every once in a while to get totally worn out and fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion. I remember doing that a lot when I was a kid. Gee, I wish some of those days still existed...

Anyways, more stories and photos to follow about this week in the most beautiful city in the world... right now my internal clock is all out of whack - I think I need to go to sleep...

Love,

Shannon xx