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Downtown Vancouver

Downtown Vancouver

Strung between the mountains and the sea, Vancouver is captivating. A scenic ferry ride or a seaplane flip away, Victoria, British Columbia’s island capital, is packed with atmosphere.

Surrounded by water and a backdrop of mountains, the setting is stunning. Light, airy, green and relaxed, Vancouver is a mesmerising city. Downtown, high rise glass and steel buildings reach into a blue sky, shading long, tree-lined streets yet never crowding you in. Sunlight glints on silvered glass, shops tempt with smart displays. Vancouver is stylish. A grid system of streets, dotted with parks and plazas, makes it easy to navigate your way around.

At Canada Place on the harbour waterfront, a roof of distinctive, billowing white sails denotes the cruise ship terminal where, all summer long, ships come and go on the ever-popular Alaska route. Little float planes zip around next-door Coal Harbour, carrying passengers across to Victoria on Vancouver Island and on sightseeing trips, exploring the mountains and the rugged fjordland and little villages of the Sunshine Coast to the north.

A walk away, Gastown, with its cobbled, tree-lined streets and Victorian architecture, is where the city’s business centre grew up in the 1880s. Named after a man from Hull, ‘Gassy Jack’ Deighton, this is where you find touristy shops, galleries, eateries and the strange clock that sounds Westminster chimes before it hisses steam into the air.

Leafy Robson Square is at the heart of downtown Vancouver, topped and tailed by the stunning glass and creeper-covered Law Courts and the stately Vancouver Art Gallery. While featuring modern art and changing exhibitions beneath its dome, highlights include the collection of work by Emily Carr, British Columbia’s best-loved painter and author, and the photo-based work of the ‘Vancouver School’.

There are elegant shops and smart malls all around, but fashionable Robson Street stays open late and is ideal for leaving until the evening when you, and seemingly half of Vancouver’s young, can stroll, shop, eat, chat and people-watch to your heart’s content. Keep walking and you reach cheaper Denman Street in the condo-packed West End, a favourite with canny locals.

There’s no better place to get your bearings than at Vancouver Lookout at Harbour Centre, where a glass-walled lift whizzes you to a circular observation platform. The views are especially stunning at sunset when the city and its surroundings seem to glow in the warm light. There’s a ‘top of the world’ revolving restaurant up there, too.

Tucked away among the busy streets of Chinatown, cloistered behind high white walls, Dr Sun Yat-Sen Garden is an oasis of peace. A classical Chinese garden in Ming Dynasty style, here plants and pagodas reflect in jade pools, bridges and paths lead among trees of varied colour and ducks swim among waterlily pads. It borders a public park and by ‘borrowing’ park views, the private garden feels much larger than it actually is.

In contrast, Stanley Park really is big. On a peninsula separated from downtown by the wildfowl-haven of Lost Lagoon, 1000 acres of tree-filled green are edged by miles of sea wall with spectacular views.

Here, walking trails lead between giant trees, trip down to sandy beaches, pass through meadows and meander around Beaver Lake. The scent of roses perfumes the air of a traditional garden, rhododendrons bloom in spring. Totem poles watch over walkers, cyclists and horse-drawn carriages.

Also in Stanley Park, the much-heralded Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre has killer and beluga whales, seals, otters, fish by the million and a steamy Amazon Gallery with piranhas, sloths and seriously big snakes.

Edging the grassy banks of English Bay, with views of rocky headlands and blue-layered mountains, Vanier Park plays host to the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival during summer months and is the setting for three excellent museums.

Involving displays at the Museum of Vancouver will give you a good insight into life in the days of the early explorers and settlers. Then, for total contrast, step into the H R MacMillan Space Centre next door, where you can defy gravity, dock a space ship and take a virtual voyage to Mars. Nearby, the triangular glass Maritime Museum houses St Roch, the first ship to navigate the North West Passage in both directions.

Up on the university campus, the UBC Museum of Anthropology may not be on the main tourist route but its fabulous displays of First Nations totem poles, art and carvings, housed in a spectacular building, are definitely worth seeing.

From downtown, a short trip across False Creek on a dinky AquaBus ferry takes you to buzzy Granville Island, which is packed with tempting shops, crafts studios, boats and workshops. Popular with locals and visitors alike, it has an excellent food market, a plethora of waterside cafés, several theatre companies, a terrific Kids’ Market – and is simply a great place to sit, enjoy the views and people watch.



Neighbourhood watch
Amazingly, about 80 per cent of downtown Vancouver is residential, as the tall outlines of countless smart apartment blocks testify. With land for building limited, any dilapidated area is revitalised, and none more so than Yaletown where disused railway yards and warehouses have blossomed into cutting-edge stores, trendy bars, smart restaurants, boutique hotels and a thriving nightlife.

To see the beautiful houses inhabited by Vancouverites you simply cross one of the bridges than span creeks and harbours – and dream. They sit in lovingly tended gardens, those hugging the coastline have beach and water views, others tuck into hills or hide among trees.

Each neighbourhood has its own character. Kitsilano, with a beach of soft golden sand, mixes its hippie roots with yuppie shopping. It drifts down to the water at English Bay, where white sailboats play against a forested mountain background and beautiful homes with manicured gardens line long, tree-lined avenues.

Point Grey is a quiet community of multimillion-dollar homes in leafy streets. Families picnic, fly kites and walk their dogs on the green lawns that back its long sweep of beach.

Cross graceful Lions Gate Bridge and you’re over on the North Shore, where communities edge forest-filled conservation reserves, lakes, cascading rivers and the towering mountains.

It’s here you’ll find Grouse Mountain with its Skyride gondolas that offer spectacular views of the city and harbour. Great for walkers and hikers, in winter there’s skiing and sleigh rides up there. Visit the orphaned grizzlies and grey wolves in the Refuge for Endangered Wildlife and get an adrenalin fix on the mountain ziplines.

Bears live in Vancouver’s woods. You might not see them, but specially designed ‘bear-proof’ rubbish bins indicate they really are around. Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver is a temperate rainforest where the trees grow so tall they form a neck-cricking canopy.

When you’re walking among them, crossing glacier-gouged creeks and canyons, passing waterfalls and a wild, rushing river, it’s hard to believe you’re just a few miles from the centre of a big, vibrant, very cosmopolitan city.

© TheTravelEditor.com

Reproduced with the kind permission of TheTravelEditor.com

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