Weekend at Burnaby

This weekend we decided to stay close to home and spend time in our local area: Burnaby. I have been reading a book on the history of Burnaby that was recommended to me by staff members at the Burnaby Village Museum: ‘Burnaby a proud century‘. I have loved reading this book as it has given me a different perspective on the area and I have noticed things I would have otherwise overlooked. For example the book mentioned a house called ‘Glenedward’ that was completed in 1912, near the corner of Kingsway and Royal Oak. The fence and foundations were made using granite from glacial boulders that were left scattered around Burnaby by ice that flowed over the land about 20,000 years ago. I checked Google Maps street view and found the house still exists, not far from its original location, as a sushi restaurant: Oyama Sushi. We ate lunch there on Saturday: a mixed platter of sushi and some delicious green tea ice-cream. It is a beautiful space and it was fun to look around the house a little and touch the granite foundations and fence!

We then did a spot of shopping at Metropolis at Metrotown, the largest mall in BC and the 2nd largest in Canada (the largest is the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta). I feel right at home living near a large mall, as back in Australia we lived close by to Chadstone Shopping Centre, which claims to be the largest shopping centre in the Southern Hemisphere.

We shopped for socks and jocks at Zellers, which is a bit like Target or Kmart. We then headed to Tim Hortons in the food court, a popular Canadian coffee shop franchise named after a hockey player. We tried some Timbits (which are donut holes), and also bought a Canucks donut to have while watching the hockey on TV later (as Saturday night is Hockey Night on CBC). They are having a competition at Tim’s at the moment where you can roll up the rim of your coffee cup to see if you’ve won a prize and Alex won a free donut! We also shopped for hoodies and t-shirts for Alex at Old Navy.

We had Sunday brunch at Horizons Restaurant on Burnaby Mountain. I had scrambled eggs and an ‘Energy Shake’ which contained freshly squeezed orange juice, banana, ginger, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, honey and ginseng with a sprig of fresh rosemary. It is the second time that Alex and I have visited Burnaby Mountain and both times it has been a little too overcast to see much, but at times, as the clouds rolled by, we could see the silhouettes of buildings in downtown Vancouver and a few snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Afterwards we briefly visited Burnaby Lake and then went to the Burnaby Art Gallery to see the latest exhibition: works on paper by Renée Van Halm. It was very peaceful as we were the only visitors at the gallery, which is in another historic house: Ceperley House. The exhibition was interesting, but I also liked looking around at the (sometimes hidden) features of the house.

18 Mar This entry was published on March 18, 2012 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Food, Parks and Gardens, Tourist Attractions. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.