Today we woke up and the weather ultimately decided what our options were. It was raining on and off all morning so at midday we decided to go to the Museum Of Vancouver which is located in Vanier Park. The museum building we visited was built in the 1960's but it was actually founded in 1894. We didn't realize before we arrived that it also shares the facilities with the MacMillan Space Center, so we're going to go back one day and go into that part of the place too as it looks cool. 

The Museum itself is interesting and it has plenty of good history and information about Vancouver. We found out quite a few things that we didn't know about the city so it was definitely worth the $11 entrance fee and it kept us entertained for a few hours. They had a small section on other things including a Mummy but it is predominantly all about Vancouver which is what we enjoyed the most. They also had a taxidermy exhibition on too, when we arrived we were even asked by one staff member if we'd made a special trip to see it but the truth is we never knew about it until we got there. I told him that we had just decided to visit because it was a rainy day and then once we turned away I had to ask Lou to explain what taxidermy actually meant! As we were already there we decided we'd check it out but it wasn't really 'our cup-of-tea'. We found it a bit weird and freaky to be honest though a part of both of us was slightly interested - I think the proper term is probably "morbid fascination"! We walked around all the taxidermy displays but being surrounded by lots of dead animals was quite eerie so we left that section after about 20 minutes or so.

After leaving the museum Lou convinced me that we needed to visit IKEA in Coquitlam. We'd previously spoke about it always being busy and that going on a weekend would be a bad idea. So, I'm not quite sure why there was a sudden change of mind but nevertheless that's where we headed. We put the GPS on which navigated us through downtown and on to Highway 1. The journey took us almost an hour to get there because of heavy traffic and bad weather. Just as expected when we arrived it was very busy and stressful just like any other IKEA in the world. I soon had a huge "Why am I doing this to myself?" moment shortly after walking through the door! We spent about 2 hours there during which we ended up buying a bunch of things that we never realize we needed or planned to buy. There were lots of screaming kids inside and I could feel their pain and empathized with them greatly. I only just managed to contain my own displeasure of Swedish furniture torture, one more hour and I think I would have been just like them. We did however get one useful thing - a dining table and 4 chairs so we can now eat properly again! 5 months of eating off trays was certainly starting to "do our heads in" so it was nice tonight to sit down at a table and eat (thanks to Lou's ability to work out flat pack puzzles without swearing). Ah, the little things hey!