We’ve had an interesting time exploring Vancouver, in varied weather – beautiful sunshine through to rain. It’s in a beautiful setting, surrounded by mountains and water and is apparently one of the most expensive cities to live in. We’ve basically walked to most places from our AirBnB in Strathcona (although had Compass cards in our pockets which were used to get us to Delta and our motorhome for the Rockies trip and for when we return to North Vancouver).
You do have to be aware of where you are, as there is a lot of homeless people on the streets, especially in one area called Downtown Eastside (edge of Gastown, Hastings Street, Crab Park area).
We’ve walked from Strathcona near Chinatown to Canada Place (cruise terminal) via Gas Town and its old buildings and quirky steam clock, along the many seawalls, through Coal Harbour, around the beautiful Stanley Park with its totem poles and lovely seawall walk, visited the fun Granville Island (an old sand spit) with its studios and yummy food market and on to Yaletown with Engine 374 (the first steam engine to traverse coast to coast in I874) and the Time Top sculpture. We’ve bobbed along the False Creek in tiny ferries that reminded us of Captain Pugwash boats, watched dragon boat racing on False Creek and watched slo pitch soft ball in the local park. Not sure we’d recommend the local hop on hop off bus – they are converted school buses and not very comfortable!
We’ve seen seals in the harbour, canadian geese with their goslings, a racoon, turtles, pretty tufted wood ducks and loads of herons. We discovered that there were over 800 craft breweries in Canada at the end of 2022, 40 of which are in the Vancouver area – so of course we’ve tried one or two!!!! Oh, and on our way up to Commercial Drive (where you’ll find the Lunch Lady – famously found in Vietnam by Anthony Bourdain) we also found La Casa Gelato – an ice-cream shop with 238 flavours!!! Took a wee while to decide what to try.
We’ve met some lovely people along the way who have been so kind and helpful (especially the folk in Bennys for providing some glue for some persistently loose screws in our suitcase).