This coming weekend.
I’m hoping to meet up with a friend, who (I also hope) will be willing to play tour guide for me. In case I end up on my own, what should I not miss? Walking is good, if there are areas that works for. It looks like they’re expecting decent weather (i.e. no rain) so that’s good.
There are extensive walking / bike paths around False Creek. Museums, beer markets and breweries, Granville Island Market for shops and eating. Gastown area and Chinatown are adjacent. Gastown is an architecture hot spot. Sun Yat-Sen garden is in Chinatown. Grouse Mountain for bears and views (north of town). Compass card for transport (bus, train, ferry. Also they have small ferries on False Creek. You can take a Hop-on Hop-off bus tour. Stanley Park. Yaletown area for food/shops. Downtown area streets for people watching. Museum of Vancouver and Maritime museum are adjacent. Great history.
see map: Google Maps
Full day: do Stanley Park in the morning, and walk the seawall over to the ferries to Granville Island for lunch. In the afternoon, go up to UBC and check out the Museum of Anthropology and maybe a couple of the gardens. The view is spectacular on a sunny day, kind of blah if it’s grey. If you like a bit of shopping, walk a few blocks up 4th street from Granville Island into Kitsilano, as it’s on the way.
Try to get into Vij’s Indian restaurant, if you can. Even the smaller version next door is good if you can’t get into the main restaurant. There are other good ones, as well, but this one is probably the best known.
Just be careful about that transition from Gas Town to Chinatown. We ran into a really scary block or two when we were there last month.
Oh, so true. “Now entering skid row”. I was there in broad daylight and saw every manner of drug addict. I never felt any danger though, just shock, horror, disgust and pity.
I’m not sure if this area is the one we walked through while there for the winter olympics, but there were several methadone clinics in an area we went through. And like the post above, we saw a lot of sad addicts. But nothing that was scary or threatening. You could’ve knocked most of them over with a stiff breeze.
It’s called “crack alley.” I don’t get it, what is the attraction to Vancouver’s Chinatown? It’s just a low-income neighbourhood with a tiny bit of historical significance, Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden is nice to visit but it’s much better in the summer when the pond is full of lilies and fish and turtles. Other than that, you get cheap groceries and cheap souvenirs and not much else. If you want to have a proper Chinese/Asian experience go to Crystall Mall near Metrotown (the Skytrain ride is quite scenic) or the Richmond Night Market (this is the last weekend for the season).
Unfortunately it looks like rain on Sunday now, so that may put a big crimp in the sightseeing that day. We’ll see.
I’m not that interested in seeing Chinatown, I’ve been to the one here in SF any number of times, and visited the one in Yokohama twice.
But thanks for the other suggestions. I’m off early tomorrow morning. Wish me luck.
Pff, time to go native then, put on your rain jacket with a hood, or buy one from any shop, leave the umbrella at home, get wet, stay wet, embrace the rain, it’s just water.
Gas Town has a lot of indigenous art galleries. If it’s not raining, I second Stanley Park for walking. If it’s pouring, Bloedel Floral Conservatory is a nice glasses-in arboretum with a bunch of exotic birds.