Visiting Vancouver, BC (Canada)

Poststructural Pub
1

My wife and I are planning a short (2 or 3 day) trip to Vancouver, BC, in the near future. (Believe it or not, we’ve lived near Seattle, WA, for 9 years without ever visiting Vancouver, BC!) We don’t have any specific “things-to-see” in mind, so I thought I’d see if any Chiffers can recommend any “don’t miss” sights/activities.

(Well, I do have one item on the agenda. I want to try on hiking boots from a brand that’s not available in the US, and there’s a store in Vancouver that carries them. I have wide, hard-to-fit feet, and most brands think all feet are skinny. :imp: )

Any suggestions?

Thanks!
John

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I always like to go down to Granville Island when I’m in Vancouver. In addition to the public market, there are lots of interesting shops.

Another nice thing…they have these great little water taxis that you can take all over the place. I know they go to Granville Island and to Stanley Park. I think you can buy a day pass for them and just ride wherever you want to go in the harbor area.

Redwolf

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I loved the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden.

Its a pretty wet, nasty sort of time of year to be hitting Vancouver (unless you’re a duck).

djm

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Better than a duck… I live in western Washington. And I like the weather. :slight_smile:

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He is a duck…we all are.
Vancouver is not far enough away to help.

Tyler might have some ideas next time he stops by.
I haven’t been up in so long that I can’t add to Redwood’s…

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I’ve only been to Vancouver once. In addition to what others have mentioned, I enjoyed walking around Chinatown and the museum on the University campus.

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Be prepared to have your car boken into. According to the RMCP, there’s an Asian Mofia in town. A friend of mine learned the hard way. He watched them break in from a running distance…they were in and out in less than a minute and stole everything worth anything. Police said it happens all the time and there’s little they can do after the fact. You look like a tourist, have a nice car with licence of a tourist…likely you’ll be watched and followed. Other than that, Vancouver is a great place. Lots of diversity.

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It’s raining. It will be raining for the near and medium future.

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like middle of July 2006?

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Hmm. Maybe we should drive my old Jeep instead of my wife’s newer car. There’s nothing in the Jeep that’s worth anything. (It doesn’t even have a CD or tape player; just an AM/FM radio.) Thanks for the warning.

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There’s going to be two weeks of snow at new years, but otherwise it’ll be raining until some time in february.

It’ll actually be raining past february, but by then it will be spring rain, and that doesn’t count. Spring in Vancouver is nearly six months long, and shouldn’t be missed.

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We’ll feel right at home, then. :laughing:

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I’ve never had my car broken in to, and there are frequently goods worth taking in it.

And yes, I live in the impoverished east end and drive all over downtown.

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I haven’t stopped in Vancouver for ages - the last couple of times I was up that way I was on my way over to Vancouver Island - but I always liked Stanley Park.

You are going to wait until this round of storms passes, aren’t you? Being the first rain/snow event of the season, people have forgotten how to drive in it. Even in Spokane the first snowfall of the year makes people drive crazier than normal. :slight_smile:

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Yeah, and you’d think people here on west side of the Cascades would remember how to drive on wet roads, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. (Sometimes I miss the :roll: smiley…)

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Oh, man, I’m super jealous Slude!!! We didn’t get a chance to go this year so I’m getting homesick for Vancouver! I concour with Simon, you ought to go in the spring, it’s gorgeous!
Definately do not miss the Sun Yat-Sen garden. If you get a chance, go over to the island and hit the Buchart Gardens in Victoria and the Parliament building and what-not over there.
I personally recomend that you tour the city on foot using the bus system, but that’s just my personal favorite way. If you want to use the transit system, I suggest staying at a hotel adjoining Metrotown Mall, I think it’s a holiday inn (at least it was when I lived there). There is access to the Skytrain from the mall, and anywhere else in the city from there. If you get outside Vancouver, like to Surrey or Port Coquitlam or such, take a car.
Definately hit Chinatown; it’s smaller than, say, the one in the SF bay area, but since there is such a huge concentration of asians in B.C., it’s cram packed with culture if you know where to look.

Avoid the corner of Hastings and Main…drive past and you’ll see why…I don’t know if it’s as bad as when I lived there, but it was definately someplace I’d rather not go. Simon, is Hastings and Main still pretty bad?

Granville island is a must, but I can’t remember what they have going on this late in the year…if you go in the middle of spring they’ll have lots to do and see there.

Stanley Park is a must as well; they have an aquarium there that is pretty good.

The Capilano suspension bridge in North Vancouver is pretty cool, but I think you have to pay to go over it…it was only about CAN$5 when I lived there. There is another suspension bridge in the vacinity that is free, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it’s called…I’ll have to go through my old journals and see… Definatly get up there and do one of those, the forrest is beutiful! It looks like the Endor Moon!!! Makes you want to get on your speeder-bike and chase down stormtroopers and play with Ewoks.

The Gaslight district is the Historical Vancouver area…very very cool if you are into old buildings and such…

One other thing…
Take your camera!!! Take a good one…if you don’t have a good one, buy a good one! Trust me, you won’t regret it. From a photographer’s POV, B.C. is a virtually perfect mass of multiple subject matters all rolled into one area…I have about 7,000 images of Vancouver, mostly on B&W 35mm and medium format, the negatives of which occupy a 50 lb capacity U-Haul box.

Another subject that you might want to pay attention to if you are interested in this sort of thing…
Vancouver, when I lived there, was the most grafittied city in North America, and there are some spectacular pieces of wall art there if you have the time to go looking for them. You get a lot of crap that punks will spray haphazardly around, but there are some true gems that some very tallented artists have put together. The tough part is finding them. during the last months I lived in Vancouver I started to do a photojournal of the graffitti that I would see, but I never got around to completing it.

I never had problems with the Triads when I lived there, but I do know that they are there and that they opperate heavily in B.C. Just be smart, dont leave valuables in your car, get a Club to put in your car, pay attention to your surroundings. Vancouver is not a dangerous city, by any stretch of the word, compared to cities of it’s size in the US. Like any other big city, though, it has it’s problems, but those problems can be avoided with simple street smarts.

I’m jealous as hell Slude! :smiley:

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Hasting and Main is ‘bad’, but remember that this is Canada, so the scary-looking people you see aren’t actually armed or anything, and the crime they get up to tends to be limited to drug dealing, prostitution, and petty theft. Try not to look like lost, wealthy and defenseless tourists and you’ll go unmolested. If you do look like free money on the hoof, I can’t guarrantee that someone won;t try to help themselves to it, but that’s not common.

There are criminals with guns in Vancouver, but these tend be used for intra-gang violence by ethnic gangs fighting for control of the drug trade in the suburbs, not downtown.

The Capilano suspension bridge in North Vancouver is pretty cool, but I think you have to pay to go over it…it was only about CAN$5 when I lived there. There is another suspension bridge in the vacinity that is free, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it’s called…

Lynn Canyon Park is the place you want–it’s a public park which boast most of the amenities of the capilano bridge, with none of the tourist trap ripoff factor.

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The University of BC Museum of Anthropology sounds really interesting to me. I think they have some magnificent wood sculptures made by Pacific Northwest Coast Indians of various groups. The museum is made of cement and glass but sort of designed on the principles of a Haida house. It has a very tall, windowed area to accomodate the tallest totem poles. I am just describing by a picture, so I may not have it quite right. Anyway, I think seeing those totem poles would be wonderful even if there wasn’t enough time to look at everything in the museum.

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Thanks for all the suggestions so far! (And please feel free to add to them!)

It looks like we’ll be driving up on a Thursday and staying two nights, so the Friday will be our only full day in Vancouver.

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One time I decided to brave the corner to get to another part of town because I didn’t have time to go around…someone tried to zing me in the leg with a needle but luckily caught my umbrella instead… :astonished: That was the only such encounter I ever had near there.

Lynn Canyon is what I was thinkning of! Thanks Simon.
Definatly get to Lynn Canyon bridge, Slude, the park there is great.

If I remember right, the Lynn Canyon park was still under some construction and updating the last time I went up there. Have they finished with all of that Simon?