Stanley Park, Vancouver

So they have touristy totems and parking for tour busses, but Stanley Park's setting on the city's edge, gazing out over the water with sea planes taking off and landing is pretty awesome, even in vile weather. We took to a strip of freezing beach and poked into holes and collected grey shells and stomped across giant drift-wood logs. Ahead of us was the impressive Lion Gate bridge and the docks with containers full of strange coloured substances and huge cranes. The girls got to roll down grassy slopes to the car, but only thanks to their full-ski wear was this not a frozen mud-fest.

Our indoor (ish) stop was the Oceanarium - the most incredible place I'd ever been. Another product of 1960s visioning and outside an Arctic pool of gleaming white Beluga whales, who got impressively active with their trainers, before dousing us with plenty of icy water. We ironically ate fish and chips (ethical of course) and then spent hours looking at displays of riverbeds across Canada and more exotic locations further afield. The jelly-fish were the most photogenic.

Beluga Cam