I will get back to the Maritime Adventures, but we had a fun day in the city yesterday, so it seemed like I should do a quick post! Staying ahead for a change. We had a beautiful Saturday, where we crammed in a lot of activities - there was the Khatsailano Street festival, followed by a free concert at the beach by the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra! And I found a few photos from JUne on my camera that I had lost track of and thought I should share.

Every summer, they shut down a long stretch of West 4th Ave through Kitsilano for a street festival they have creatively named “Khatsailano”. We’ve been a couple times, but since COVID, it seemed like we missed it being on Galiano. They do a great job, closing 4th from Burrard to Macdonald, about a 2 km stretch. All the stores put up tents and have fun sales and activities, there are a number of beer gardens and stages set up with live music. It’s lots of fun, we weer at home and had some time to wander and check out the fun event.

The event was fun - we grabbed some food, stopped for a beer and tolerated the crowds. Once we had our fill, we wandered over to Chewies, a local oyster bar for a late afternoon happy hour! We had some oysters, a glass of wine and some appies and watched the world go by. They it was home and time for a nap on the roof.

That evening, we had decided to walk across the bridge to English Bay, where the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (VSO) was putting on their annual free show. As it turned out, our neighbours Adam and Joanie were also planning to go down (with their two young children Brin and Chloie), so we decided to head over together.

As it turned out, Adam and Joanie had some friends with a killer apartment overlooking the beach, so instead of having to deal with the masses, we could sit in their apartment a floor up and watch and listen in much more style! They were kind enough to let us crash the party.

It’s a good thing that we had a place to watch from - the beach was packed!

They expected over 15,000 people and the beach seemed like there was easily that many.

As the music started, the sun also started to set and give us some colour.

We had a beautiful sunset to go along with the music.

As mentioned, I had missed a bunch of photos on my good camera. So, I thought I’d add them here.

Catching the foxglove in full bloom.

Juvenile white-crowned sparrows, hunting for bugs.

Hairy woodpecker.

Gold finches

Purple finch

A flock of cedar waxwings

White-crowned sparrow on the foxgloves

The last interesting ones are this set of the hairy woodpeckers on the suet feeder. There was three of them - a mother and two young ones, and she was feeding them, despite the fact that they were almost as big as her!