My husband asked me what I would like to do for Valentine’s Day this year. Our standard celebration consists of a romantic dinner and wine. {If I’m lucky, I can usually convince him to watch the Notebook!} But this year, we want to do something a bit more memorable as it’s our first Valentine’s Day as a married couple. In addition, we want to do something that’s in our hometown of New Westminster, B.C. where we plan to grow our family. So when I came across this article about New Westminster’s very own Parisian style love lock bridge in the News Leader, I knew I found something memorable.
Located on the fence at the east end of Pier Park, near the urban beach is New Westminster’s own “love lock” attraction similar to the Ponts des Arts Bridge in Paris. In fact, before I was married, my best girlfriend and I placed our own love lock on this very bridge (and we put my now husband’s initials on the back!).
Unfortunately, according to the New Westminster News Leader article, the City of Paris recently prohibited love locks from the Ponts des Arts, one of three bridges across the Seine that have become destinations for padlock packing lovers. There were so many locks on the bridge’s rails, part of the parapet collapsed.
The design for Westminster Pier Park comes from the artificial beaches along the Seine River in Paris, France! Berlin, Machester, Budapest, Prague and even Toronto have similar sandbox style beaches.
New West’s love locks have their own Twitter account at twitter.com/quaydelamour
Looking for more ideas on what to do in New Westminster? You may also like this article: New Westminster, BC – Vancouver’s New Brooklyn?
