Vancouver Holiday Lights & VanDusen Botanical Garden Festival of Lights

I go nuts for Christmas lights and have been a huge fan of seeking them out each holiday season for as long as I can remember. When I was much younger, my whole family used to pile into our minivan and go driving around Pittsfield in search of the best displays, which is something that I look forward to doing with my own kids someday. In the meantime, I'm totally content to check out local Christmas lights each winter, sans kids.

Vancouver was a lovely place to spend a holiday season, lights-wise. The city itself was full of businesses and homes/apartments alike that decked their halls and trees and front doors and balconies with plenty of holiday lights.

Walking over the Burrard Bridge towards Downtown, we could see Christmas lights on the balconies and Christmas trees inside the windows of all the high-rises...

.  all of the blues, purples and reds you see in that picture are different strands of lights  .

And here are a few more Downtown/neighborhood pics of lights from this past season:

.  watch a video of this ball of lights in action here  .

.  downtown, robson square, ice skating rink  .

.  christmas lights on palm trees  .

.  lights filling the front yard of the sheraton hall centre downtown  .

.  lights of hope in front of st. paul's hospital  .

Here is an exceptionally awesome display from within our own neighborhood. This one apartment was decked out like a tiny Las Vegas, and I had to swing past it with my camera one night to take this video:

David and I also attempted to visit Bright Nights, which is a park-wide display of lights that can be seen via a little train ride through Stanley Park (a park just northwest of Downtown Vancouver). However, we didn't realize that the train ride was mandatory in order to see the displays... we thought we'd have the option of being able to walk through the park to check it all out. Since I like walking and also hate waiting 3 hours for an open seat on a train to see some Christmas lights, we did not end up taking the train. Here's a bit of what can be seen of Bright Nights if you do not take the train...

.  the front .

.  the middle .

.  the back .

... Not a ton.

HOWEVER! All was not lost... because Vancouver has another Christmas lights extravaganza that requires no train whatsoever - the VanDusen Botanical Garden's Festival of Lights! David and I spent the early evening on New Year's Eve walking around the Garden for a couple of hours, taking in the lights. It was exactly what I needed!! Click on any of these photos to see a slideshow of larger versions:

And of course it wouldn't be Christmas without a couple of horrifying monsters... 

... right?

There were really a ton of lights at the Botanical Garden. The grounds were larger than I expected them to be and then were totally covered with displays, with lots of different paths going off in every direction. Every half hour, there was a light show around the garden's Livingstone Lake, with "dancing lights" flashing and dimming in time to music being broadcast over loudspeakers throughout the garden. I hurried to catch it on video, below... it starts out a bit fuzzy but becomes clearer, so bear with it!

Today I've begun the process of taking down our Christmas decorations and un-dressing our tree. I'm not pleased about it though, because the tree still looks, feels and smells terrific. (Sidenote: Watering your Christmas tree with sugar water is the way to go. It was a tip I received from the guys I bought the tree from, and the tree has hardly shed any needles at all!) Aside from it making our living room smell nice, having a large plant in the room (even a large dead plant) with white lights on it has provided a really nice light treatment for our living room. Soft white lighting emanating from a 5-foot tall douglas fir? Suck on that, Ikea Vidja floor lamp.