Circling around Vancouver
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Downtown Vancouver is situated in a peninsula. With a day to explore, James and I walked, boated, bussed, and biked around the city! It’s very easy to get around without having a car and there’s a lot to explore. I hope I have the chance to revisit soon.
The following map (provided by OpenStreetMap) shows some of the highlights of the journey.
Landmarks:
- Granville Island
- Science World
- Chinatown
- Gastown
- Waterfront
- The Shipyards
- Stanley Park
- English Bay Beach
We stayed at a hotel near the Yaletown-Roadhouse station. We started the day by walking across the bridge to Granville market.
This area has a lot of tourist-y souvenir shops. Great place to snag a few postcards. We had an early lunch at the Granville Island Public Market.
Granville Island is situated at False Creek. Luckily the next stop on our journey, the Science Center, is also on this creek. The most fun way to get between the two places is to take a ferry.
The last stop of the ferry is the Science Center. You can’t miss it, there’s a giant steel colored ball on top. The museum is highly interactive and is designed to impress. I learned there that Smart glass exists.
From the Science Center, we took a short walk to Chinatown. We didn’t end up doing too much there, mostly took in the scenery.
We then took a bus to Gastown. Every hour the local steamclock plays its version of the Westminster Chime.
We walked over to the Waterfront station to take a boat over to North Vancouver.1 The false creek ferry was small. This boat, however, wasn’t. I walked in and found it hilarious how it looks like your standard metro or bus.2
At North Vancouver we visited the Shipyards. It provides what I think is one of the best views of the Vancouver City Center skyline.
We ate food at a local pizza place, and visited a few of the local bookstores in this area. The local bus system then took us to Stanley Park.
Stanley Park is a must see if you’re ever in Vancouver. The Vancouver Seawall surrounds the perimeter and offers stunning view of the city and the local mountains.
The park is large. To make the most of the journey, I recommend biking the path. When we went there were easily accessible bike rentals.
After exiting the perimeter of the park on the left side, we were looking for a place to return our bikes. Unfortunately a lot of the bike return spots were full! We luckily found exactly two empty spots at the English Bay Beach.
Even though the bike ride was extremely rewarding, it was also physically draining. We didn’t stay too long at the beach, and instead took an Uber to the hotel to rest.