Vancoooover

A few weeks ago I went to Vancouver for a work conference. I always enjoy these conferences due to the people that I meet and the things that I get invited to do. As a meeting planner, a lot of vendors want to get my business, so they try to schmooze me as much as possible while there for the conference. The cities that host the event usually try to show off their party skills, so whatever we do is always entertaining and fun. And I usually get a nice hotel room, to boot. Here are a few of the photos from my trip.


I posted this on facebook a week or so ago, but it is worth putting up here. I ran into a mountie in Canada that I saw (not met) in Utah at Arnold Friberg's funeral a month or so ago. My memory = freakish.

Apparently the Olympic torch was lit the night that I arrived in Vancouver at the conference's opening reception. This was obviously not taken then, but this was right at the convention center, so I saw it a lot.

The beautiful view from my hotel room at the Hyatt. Hyatt is not my favorite hotel brand, but I will say that it was nice and surpassed my expectations. Might have been due to the upgrade they gave me, but I'll take it.

Went for a carriage ride in Stanley Park - couldn't get over how beautiful the draft horses were. And how large.

For the closing night reception, they shut down part of Granville Street and had an outdoor street fair of sorts. All the restaurants on the street were open and you could go in and eat/drink at any of them for free until 10pm when they reopened to the public. There were a bunch of street performers - the lady below was throwing fire around.

And while I was talking to some friends, a lame seagull waltzed into Claire's. Imagine a seagull getting all riled up in a store like Claire's. Oh, the hilarity. The best part of this was that a few guys tried to get the bird into this plastic box for minutes. Then a woman meeting planner walked into the store, calmed down the bird, picked it up and walked right out with it. So awesome.

The last day I was there, my coworker and I went on a bike ride around Vancouver - we started out just around Stanley Park, but ended up on Granville Island and in Chinatown before we had lunch in the Gaslamp. The weather was incredible the entire time we were there and I'd definitely go back to go skiing and explore a little more. If you've never been, Vancouver is definitely a mix of Seattle and San Francisco - nothing like Montreal or Toronto.