Vancouver & The Islands
Western Canada’s biggest city often finds itself compared to San Francisco—its diverse, artsy, gay-friendly vibe makes the comparison easy. Vancouver also has a strong dose of Portland in its exuberant embrace of the great outdoors. But Vancouver is very much its own city. In a little more than a hundred years it has gone from being just the last stop on the Canadian Pacific Railway to a multi-ethnic metropolis that consistently tops surveys of the world’s great cities.
Activities and Attractions:
There are two ways to quickly get to the heart and soul of Vancouver. The first is to explore the city’s distinctive neighborhoods. To get your bearings before setting out, ascend to the 545-foot Lookout at the Harbour Centre.
Then start with Chinatown. Its non-touristy streets are full of immigrants living their daily lives, shopping for house wares and noshing dim sum at authentic Cantonese restaurants. (Complement your Chinatown experience by visiting the upscale Aberdeen Mall or the Yao Han Centre in the wealthy, heavily Asian suburb of Richmond.)
Stroll or drive through leafy Shaughnessy, where the city’s elite live in 1920s-vintage mansions. Do a pub-crawl through Gastown, Vancouver’s oldest, most Victorian neighborhood. It has cobblestone streets, beautiful buildings, and some of the best restaurants in the city. Yaletown, a former meatpacking district not unlike New York City’s, is gentrifying into an excellent place to shop for high-end furniture or have a meal at trendy café.
The second way to experience the best of what Vancouver has to offer is by getting into the great outdoors. This is easy, even within the city boundaries. Start by exploring Stanley Park, one of the greatest urban parks in the world, with hiking and biking trails offering views of beautiful Burrard Inlet.
Whatever sport you’re into, you can probably do it in Vancouver. Summers are warm and comfortable, allowing for many days of golfing the city’s five public courses, kayaking False Creek, fishing for salmon, and even sunbathing on English Bay Beach. In the winter, you don’t have to go farther than North Vancouver, almost within sight of the city skyline, for great cross-country skiing and snow shoeing, and some low-key downhill action. World-class alpine action is just two hours north of the city at Whistler.
Though you’ll never exhaust all that Vancouver has to offer, nearby islands do offer a change of scenery. Charming Salt Spring Island is an artist colony with plenty of elbowroom and good hiking and boating.
Far larger is Vancouver Island. Confusingly, the city of Vancouver is not located on this namesake piece of land. Vancouver Island’s biggest city is actually tidy, rose-scented Victoria, a high-tea sipping town that puts the British back in British Columbia. The rest of Vancouver Island is mostly rugged wilderness and parkland. For a taste of the wilder side of the province, visit Pacific Rim National Park, on the island’s southern coast. The town of Tofino has a number of luxury properties that provide a cushy home base for your exploration of the park’s old-growth forests and Nordic-style fjords.
Insider Tip:
Promotional photos of British Columbia tend to show it in its full summer glory. But there’s no bad time to visit. Consider a winter vacation—winters here are much milder than you would expect, with very little snow at sea level. Restaurants and attractions are uncrowded, and if you arrive around Christmastime, you’ll see charming Victorian holiday displays everywhere. (The best, naturally, are in the city of Victoria.)
-Exclusively for Perfect Escapes by Nicole Clausing |
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