60 Hours in Vancouver 🇨🇦
An adventure through Vancouver's city and nature.
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After our exciting time in Toronto & Niagara Falls, it was time to head west to Vancouver. It's still mind-blowing to us Dutchies (or Europeans for that matter) that you can fly for five hours and still be in the same country.
Canada, you’re impressive.
What wasn’t that impressive was our journey to cross this big country.
Our flight was unfortunately delayed by almost two hours, and when we finally boarded, the A/C broke down. Therefore we had to wait 30 minutes in a super hot plane before taking off. Safe to say that we were a bit hot and bothered at that time 😉
But, after a smooth rest of our flight, we made it to Vancouver.
And we were ready for our next adventure!
Day 1: A Shocking Introduction and Tasty Indian Food
We arrived in Vancouver in the early evening and on our bus ride across town, we were confronted with a side of Canada we hadn’t seen before.
Lots and lots of homeless people.
Our Airbnb was on the east side of Vancouver and our bus took us along East Hastings Street for about 25-minutes. For at least half of the ride, we saw homeless people sitting on the floor in groups, crossing the streets with their trollies of collected belongings, and unfortunately we also witnessed them shooting drugs up their veins on this early Friday evening.
We knew a bit about the fetynal crisis in North America, but this was an unexpected first-hand introduction.
It made us realize how incredibly lucky we are. To have stable jobs and finances, to have a strong support system in our country, and to be able travel the world and enjoy its beauties.
After this initial shock, we arrived at our lovely Airbnb in a peaceful, suburban neighborhood.
Tired and hungry, we were ready for dinner.
Our amazing host had a list of recommendations for the area. An Indian place on her list caught our eye. After a nice evening stroll to Commercial Drive, we settled at Bombay Kitchen.
Tasty food and friendly service - it was the perfect way to kick off our time in Vancouver.
Day 2: Walking, walking, and some more walking!
Our first full day in Vancouver was all about exploring the city.
Our first stop was the iconic Gastown Steam Clock - one of Vancouver's quirkiest attractions. And as a result, it gets a lot of visitors.
Which led to a hilarious moment:
There was a big group of Asian tourists (we’re not sure which country) taking lots of individual photos in a high-speed fashion. A person would step up, their picture would be taken by one woman (we think their tour guide), who would then call on the next person for their happy snap.
Rinse and repeat.
It was an impressively efficient operation, done with lots of fun energy.
Enter Mike.
He saw an opportunity when the next person was called on and he quickly stepped up to get his photo taken as well. Lots of laughs and a few quick snaps later, Mike was immortalized in their travel photographs.
He’s probably part of their annual trip photo album.
We didn’t get the photo ourselves, but, honestly, that just makes it even better! 😂
After taking our own photo and getting some local souvenirs, we found a cozy café (Stega Eatery) nearby to enjoy a delicious breakfast.
Next, we walked down to the port area to watch some seaplanes - those cute propellor ones taking off from Vancouver's Harbour.
How long could one watch this fun Vancouver sight?
Ask Mike - it surely entertained him for quite a while 😉
From there, we made our way to Granville Island.
This artsy area is full of quirky shops, galleries, and (food) markets.
We wandered around, saw some amazing art pieces (which we’ll have to go back for when we have the required budget). We wondered whether we could afford one of the available boats (spoiler alert: we couldn’t), and eventually we settled down for lunch in the lively Granville Island Public Market.
The variety of food was fantastic - from fresh pastries to delicious Asian stir fries, there’s something for everyone.
We left feeling full and inspired!
Our post-lunch adventure took us along the coastline of Vancouver to Stanley Park - another must-visit in Vancouver.
Stanley Park is Vancouver’s largest urban park, covering over 1,000 acres (4km² !!).
It's full of walking trails, beautiful waterfront views, and lots of wildlife (family-friendly ones, like ducks, bevers, and birds 🤓). Unfortunately for us, the Vancouver bike rental app had some technical issues, so we couldn’t use our favorite mode of transport (yes, we are typical Dutchies). Nevertheless, we really enjoyed strolling through the peaceful park on foot instead.
For our evening program we tried some local beers at Stanley Park Brewery, got a quick bite to eat at Mike’s favorite food chain (Chipotle), and made our way down south for the highlight of our day:
The Kid LAROI’s concert!
A week before leaving for Canada we spontaneously decided to buy tickets and we’re very happy we did. The energy was electric, and we had an absolute blast. His music also became the soundtrack for the rest of our trip.
Listen to our favorite song of his here to get yourself in a great mood:
Day 3: Relaxation and… Hiking?
After walking nearly 28,000 steps the previous day, we had planned to take it easy.
We had a slow morning, enjoyed a nice breakfast at a great place nearby (East Café). And in the meantime, we waited for our laundry to be done (because, yes, we are trying to master light-packing in preparation for our world trip).
By the afternoon, we felt we’d seen everything we wanted to see in Vancouver and were ready to enjoy some of its surrounding nature.
We headed to North Vancouver for a short, one-hour loop around Lynn Canyon.
And here we slowly but surely drifted off of our plan. 🙃
A 30-minute Uber ride brought us to the head of our trail, the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge.
After passing the crowds at the suspension bridge and the 30 Foot Pool, we took a well-considered detour. The stairs next to the 30 foot pool were under construction, making it seem that you couldn’t continue.
But.
We’d read the reviews on AllTrails and figured out that you could easily climb up the rocks on the left of the stairs. After around 7 minutes, we had bypassed the crowds and were surrounded by the peaceful, quietness of the forest again.
And here we lost track of time.
And the trail 🥲
We found a gorgeous, rocky riverbed where we leisurely hang out. We then kept going left or a bit too long and had completely gone wrong, but in the best way since it was so great to walk around in nature.
When we finally found our way back, we continued to Rice Lake. After enjoying the scenery here, we realized we’d already spent more than 3 hours exploring. We also still needed to make our way back to the trail head to catch a bus into the city.
We quickly walked on to see a few more pretty views of Lynn Canyon (we simply couldn’t help it) and finally made our way back to the bus stop.
In the end our chilled day had turned into a 4-hour hike with a total of 25.000 steps.
Surprising to say the least, but we loved every bit of it 😊
What do you think?
Did we seem ready to explore some more nature?
We think so! And that’s why we were very happy to pick up our Outdoorsy campervan the next day for our 9-day adventure through Jasper and Banff.
We're incredibly excited to share our journey through the Canadian Rockies with you, so stay tuned for the next editions of Mapping Memories!
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Such a great introduction to Vancouver.
You will certainly love Banff and Jasper.
Just make sure you properly store your food. Bears are always hungry.