Vancouver is awesome! The kids and I drove up two days ago to explore, retrieve a friend from the Vancouver airport yesterday, and drive back down to Seattle today. A feel a little silly doing a post that involves no biking on my part, but I wasn’t able to find a shop that rents cargo bikes (based on one phone call to Rain City Bikes). However, yesterday we drove by Yes Cycle Bicycle Rentals and I saw they had bikes with iBert front baby seats or rear kid seats. Too late for this visit, but I phoned them in the evening and asked if one could rent a bike with both front and rear seats. The guy on the phone said he thought it’d be hard to handle (even after I mentioned this is my setup at home), but I think we left it at, yes, I could rent a two-kid bike. Hopefully my next visit up will be by train with my bike along, but if not, I’ll be visiting Yes Cycle.

Sunday we drove directly to Granville Island and luckily found a parking spot. Bicycle is definitely the way to visit the place. We saw bikes everywhere, many of them rentals and lots of their riders obviously inexperienced, which makes me think it’s an easy-to-reach destination. We spent most of our time at the wonderful spray park and playground, but the Kids Market and Public Market were big draws, too. I saw lots of bikes with trailers, but the cutest thing I saw was a bachelorette party on bike. The bride-to-be wore a shiny white sash and a veil flowed out from under her helmet.

We headed to the Sylvia Hotel in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day across the street on English Bay. Paradise! The bay is lined by an inner walking path and an outer bike path and again, there were bikes everywhere. Bike rental shops everywhere, too.

Monday was monsoon day which drove us indoors to the Vancouver Aquarium in Stanley Park, right next to our hotel. It was too rainy for me to see any bike paths, but I know they’re there.

I see a Canadian bike adventure in our future. Bike to King Street Amtrak Station (though 7:40am departure doesn’t sound too pleasant–but better than 6:50pm departure with 10:50pm arrival) and easy bike over to the Sylvia Hotel. Another option is to stay at a hotel along the SkyTrain, but I really liked the West End/English Bay area. Canada, we’ll be back!