5 Days in Vancouver

Start where the city meets the forest. Stanley Park covers 405 hectares, about a fifth more than Central Park, on the tip of the downtown peninsula. Lost Lagoon was made in 1913-16 from a tidal flat and got its name because it used to vanish at low tide.

The park is not wilderness, and its history is the real story. A large Squamish village called Xwayxway stood on this shore, and in 2010 the chief of the Squamish Nation proposed renaming the park after it. The park opened in 1888 and was named after Lord Stanley, the new governor general; the Squamish, Portuguese, Scots and Chinese families who lived on the peninsula were pushed out over the following decades, and the last resident stayed until 1958. Walk the path around the lagoon, then follow the signs to Brockton Point.

The most visited spot in the park is a group of ten totem poles at Brockton Point. Four came from Alert Bay in 1924 and stood at Lumbermen's Arch; more were bought from Haida Gwaii and Rivers Inlet in the 1920s and 1930s, and all moved here in 1962. Some were carved in the late 1880s. Many are now replicas, with the originals kept in museums.

Treat it as a first look: the Museum of Anthropology on day four gives these poles the context they lack here. Nearby is the 9 O'Clock Gun, an 1816 naval cannon fired every night since 1898, now by an electronic trigger.

Prospect Point is the cliff viewpoint on the park's north side, with the Lions Gate Bridge above the water and ships passing underneath. In 1889 Lord Stanley, the first governor general to visit Vancouver, dedicated the park here, with the words "I name thee Stanley Park". Take the road or the trail up from the Seawall; it is a climb.

The city lists Prospect Point Cafe as open all year, but its hours aren't posted, so count on coffee and a snack rather than a big hot meal. The Teahouse at Ferguson Point, further on, is the sit-down alternative; its days change with the season, so book a window table and confirm first.

A basalt stack 15-18 meters tall stands just off the shore on the park's west side. It is the only sea stack of its kind in the Vancouver area, a volcanic dike that formed about 32 million years ago and has outlasted the softer sandstone around it. Its Squamish name is Slhx̱í7lsh, and in one telling it is a man turned to stone as a reward for being an unselfish father.

The English name is contested: siwash is a Chinook Jargon word for a First Nations person, from French sauvage, and some people find it derogatory. The rock takes ten minutes, not an hour.

From Siwash Rock the Seawall turns south and the park turns into a string of beaches. Third Beach faces the sunset and has driftwood to sit on; keep going past Second Beach and the path brings you out on the sand at English Bay.

This stretch is good in the rain, which sounds like a joke and isn't. Cloud sits on the water, the mountains vanish and few people are out. You can leave the path at any beach and catch a bus back toward downtown.

English Bay is the city's front yard, on the west side of downtown, with Stanley Park behind it and Kitsilano across the water. The Inukshuk on the rocks at the water's edge was built by Alvin Kanak for Expo 86 and moved here in 1987. In summer the bay hosts the Celebration of Light fireworks, and each winter an annual Polar Bear Swim.

Sunset comes early in the wet season, around 5:50 pm in early November and 5:15 pm in mid-December, because BC no longer changes its clocks. Be on the sand ten minutes before. The West End streets behind the beach hold some of the densest restaurant blocks in the city, so you can eat without crossing town.

Start with a commute locals actually do. The SeaBus is a passenger ferry between Waterfront Station downtown and Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver, and the crossing takes about 12 minutes. It belongs to the TransLink network, so a Compass card, a ticket or a DayPass pays for it.

The best part is the view back: the downtown towers, the white sails of Canada Place and the floatplanes taking off from the harbor. Stand on the outside deck if it isn't pouring. Today is a DayPass day: you ride the SeaBus twice and the bus twice.

The Capilano Suspension Bridge is 140 meters long and hangs 70 meters above the river, and the park draws over a million visitors a year. The first bridge went up in 1889, built by the Scottish engineer George Grant Mackay from hemp rope and cedar planks; a wire cable replaced it in 1903, and the current bridge dates from 1956. Treetops Adventure, footbridges between old Douglas firs, opened in 2004, and Cliffwalk, a path along the canyon wall, in 2011.

It is expensive and crowded, and it is also a good walk in real rainforest. Cross the bridge first, then spend your time on Treetops and Cliffwalk, which are quieter. From 2 November the park opens 10-5; Canyon Lights, when it is strung with lights, runs from 20 November 2026 to 10 January 2027, 11 am to 9 pm, and is included in the ticket.

Grouse Mountain is the nearest mountain to downtown. The Red Skyride has carried people up since 1976 and has just been fitted with new cabins, and the Blue Grouse Gondola, opened in December 2024, is the newer cabin ride beside it. Mountain admission covers a round trip on either.

The view is the whole of Vancouver, with the downtown towers, English Bay and the airport laid out below, and on a clear day Vancouver Island beyond. It is colder up top than in the city, and cloud can sit right on the summit. There is a lodge, a viewing deck and, in winter, skiing. The Grouse Grind, the 2.9 km, 853 m climb up the mountain's face, is closed for maintenance until 10 November this year.

The mountain also runs a wildlife refuge for animals that couldn't survive in the wild. Its two grizzlies, Grinder and Coola, had lived there since 2001; Grinder died on 31 July 2026 at 25, after a spinal condition paralyzed his hind legs, and Coola remains. The bears hibernate in winter, so the habitat can be empty.

Stay up for the last light. In December the sun is down by about 5:15 pm, and the lights of the city and of the ships in the inlet come on one by one. If the cloud is below you, which happens on the best days, the summit sits in the sun above a sea of white.

Don't leave it to the last cabin down, because the queue builds once the light has gone. Bus 236 runs from the base back to Lonsdale Quay.

Lonsdale Quay Market sits steps from the SeaBus dock and is open seven days: the market floor 9 am to 7 pm, and the Food Hall and Bar 10 am to 9 pm Sunday to Thursday, until 11 on Friday and Saturday. More than 60 local businesses are inside, which makes it the easy place to eat before the ferry back.

Eat at the Food Hall or have a proper meal in one of the restaurants around Lower Lonsdale, then take the SeaBus and watch downtown light up as you cross.

Canada Place, with its fabric roofs shaped like sails, is the main cruise ship terminal and a convention centre. Walk out along the pier for the view of the North Shore mountains and the floatplanes taking off from the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre next door. A few minutes west, at Jack Poole Plaza, the Olympic Cauldron from the 2010 Winter Games still stands by the water.

Then walk to the Marine Building at 355 Burrard Street, listed among the best Art Deco buildings in the world. It opened in 1930 as the city's tallest, covered in marine-themed ornament, and cost $1.1 million more than planned: its Toronto developer bet that the Panama Canal would turn Vancouver into a great port. Look at the lobby ceiling.

The gallery fills the old provincial courthouse, designed by Francis Rattenbury, who also designed the Parliament Buildings and the Empress Hotel in Victoria. The gallery moved in during 1983 after Arthur Erickson remodeled the building. Its permanent collection centers on Emily Carr, the BC painter of forests and totem poles, and the temporary shows are usually the draw.

Go for Carr and one or two exhibitions, not the whole building. It is open 10 to 5, until 8 on Fridays, and closed on Tuesdays; the first Friday of the month is free from 4 to 8 pm. On a heavy-rain morning it is the best dry hour of your day.

A few blocks from the gallery is the best snack in town. Noriki Tamura and his wife moved to Vancouver in 2005 and opened a hot dog stand on Burrard Street the same year; Japadog is now a small chain, with a shop at 530 Robson that keeps long hours (Sunday hours differ between listings, so check).

The idea is a hot dog with Japanese toppings: a Kurobuta pork or beef sausage in a soft bun, with things like teriyaki sauce, seaweed, Japanese mayonnaise or okonomiyaki sauce. The Terimayo, teriyaki plus mayonnaise plus nori, is the classic.

Gastown is where Vancouver began. In 1867 John Deighton, a Yorkshire sailor and barkeeper, arrived with little more than six dollars, some furniture, his Indigenous wife and a yellow dog, and opened a saloon for the workers at the nearby sawmill. He talked so much they called him Gassy Jack, and the settlement became Gassy's Town. His statue stands in Maple Tree Square; the 1886 fire burned his saloon. In the 1960s a campaign saved the district from a freeway.

On Water Street is the steam clock, built in 1977 by the clockmaker Raymond Saunders, who then built more around the world. It's a tourist knot, and the brick warehouses and cobblestones are the better part. Now the honest bit: Gastown borders the Downtown Eastside, one of the poorest areas in Canada, and Hastings Street between Abbott and Gore is where homelessness, addiction and overdoses are most visible. Walk it in daylight, don't photograph people, and if you feel uneasy turn back toward Water Street. It isn't hard to find your way out.

Ten minutes from Gastown is Chinatown, Canada's largest and a National Historic Site since 2011. The Millennium Gate at Pender and Taylor marks the west end. The story here is hard: from 1885 Canada charged Chinese immigrants a head tax, 50 dollars at first and 500 by 1903; in 1907 a mob rioted through the neighborhood; and in 1923 the tax was replaced by a law that nearly banned Chinese immigration altogether.

The Sam Kee Building, at West Pender and Carrall, is a small monument to that. Chang Toy built it in 1913 on the strip left after the city expropriated most of his lot to widen the street, a spite house only 1.5 meters wide on the ground floor and recognized by Guinness as the narrowest commercial building in the world. Chinatown today is quieter, and the best Chinese food has moved to Richmond (day five), but the tea shops, herbalists and bakeries repay a loop.

At 578 Carrall Street, a classical Chinese garden sits behind plain walls: the first built outside Asia, opened in April 1986 in time for Expo 86 with help from experts from Suzhou. It has a pond, rock groupings meant to read as mountains, pavilions and covered walkways, and it is meant to be seen slowly, from every angle.

It works well in the rain: the water is still, and the covered walkways keep you dry. Join a guided tour if one is running, since the symbolism is easy to miss. Recent listings give winter hours of about 9:30 to 4, Wednesday to Sunday, and the garden's own site could not be checked, so confirm there. The public park next door, in the same style, is free.

Steamworks has brewed in Gastown for over 25 years. The name comes from the original steam-distribution piping its owners found in the historic building. The flagship is an IPA, with a pilsner and the Lions Gate Lager alongside.

Order a tasting flight and something from the kitchen. It is the easy evening after a long walk; for something quieter, try the restaurants on the streets behind.

Granville Island is not an island. It's a peninsula built from dredged fill in False Creek, after 1915, as an industrial area. The federal government took it over in 1972, and in 1979 a 50,000-square-foot industrial building became the Public Market, which is still the heart of it: open 9 to 6 every day, closed on Mondays only in January.

Do a loop and eat as you go. Lee's Donuts has sold its Honey Dip since 1979. Longliner Seafoods, one of the market's original tenants, sells fresh and smoked local seafood. Northern Bars makes modern Nanaimo bars, and Maples' Sugar Shack has sold maple syrup since 1999. For coffee, JJ Bean and Blue Parrot open at 7:30, and Petit Ami at 8:30.

Past the market, the Island is a few lanes of artists' studios, craft shops and small makers. Artisan Sake Maker, on Railspur Alley, describes itself as the first boutique premium sake winery in Canada, and The Liberty Distillery is a few steps away. The Net Loft has more shops, open 10 to 6.

Small private ferries (False Creek Ferries and Aquabus) cross False Creek if you want a different route out. Shops keep their own hours, so take what is open.

Walk west from the Island along the Seawall: through Vanier Park, past the Museum of Vancouver and the Maritime Museum, to Kitsilano Beach. Kits, as everyone calls it, has beach volleyball and a view across English Bay to the downtown towers, with the mountains behind them.

In summer it is among the busiest beaches in the city; in November it belongs to joggers and dog walkers, which is the better version. Count on an hour and a half at an easy pace.

The Museum of Anthropology is the one museum in Vancouver not to skip. It stands on a cliff above the water, in a concrete building by Arthur Erickson that opened in 1976 and takes its post-and-beam look from the houses of the Northwest Coast peoples. It displays the art of the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, with totem poles, house posts and carvings, and the Haida artist Bill Reid's sculpture The Raven and the First Men, unveiled in 1986, based on a Haida story.

The museum holds close to 50,000 ethnographic objects, and it is where the poles you saw at Brockton Point make sense. The museum closed for about 18 months for a seismic upgrade and reopened on 13 June 2024. Give it two to three hours.

Salmon n' Bannock, on West Broadway, is an Indigenous bistro opened in 2010 by Inez Cook of the Nuxalk Nation. Its modern dishes are built on traditional ingredients: salmon, game, berries and bannock, the bread that became a staple of Indigenous cooking. The restaurant says all its seafood is wild and caught off the BC coast, and its game is organic and free range.

The dining room is small, so reserve. Order the salmon and a bannock to share. After a day in a museum about the First Nations of this coast, it is the right way to finish the evening.

The Canada Line takes about half an hour from downtown to Aberdeen station, which opens straight into Aberdeen Centre, a mall built for Hong Kong-style shopping. Many Cantonese chefs and restaurateurs arrived from Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s, and Richmond is where their cooking now lives. Today the center of Chinese Vancouver is here, not in Chinatown.

Fisherman's Terrace, open here since 1995, serves dim sum from 10 am to 3 pm daily. Be there by 11:30 so the rest of the day still fits, and order the classics: shrimp har gow, pork siu mai, a baked barbecue pork bun and rice rolls. Tea comes first.

Ride the Canada Line two stops on from Aberdeen to Richmond-Brighouse and take bus 403 to the International Buddhist Temple on Steveston Highway. The Hong Kong-funded temple opened to the public in 1986, and its design is based on the Forbidden City in Beijing: golden roof tiles, flared eaves and courtyards, with a classical Chinese garden of lotus ponds and a stone bridge behind.

Walk through the halls and the garden, and keep your voice down, because this is a place of worship first. The temple says it is open daily from 9 am to 5 pm, though events can change that, so check its site. Beyond the garden, a short stretch of No. 5 Road also holds a Sikh gurdwara, a Hindu temple and a mosque, a quick lesson in how the region has changed.

Return to Brighouse and take one of the Steveston buses (401, 402, 406 or 407). Steveston was once called Salmonopolis: by the 1890s about half of the river's 45 canneries stood here. The Gulf of Georgia Cannery opened in 1894 and was known as the Monster Cannery, packing more than 2.5 million cans in 1897 with crews of First Nations, Chinese, Japanese and European workers. The reduction plant closed in 1979, the federal government bought the site, and it opened as a museum in 1994.

It is a National Historic Site, and it is the best hour and a half of the day if you like machines and labor history. The canning line, the film and the guides explain who actually did the work. It is open daily 10 to 5, so reach it by about 3:30.

Walk east along the waterfront to the Britannia Shipyards, a National Historic Site of weathered buildings on pilings over the Fraser. The cannery here closed in 1917 and became a boatyard. The Murakami family, Japanese-Canadian boatbuilders, lived on the site until their forced removal in 1942, and a Chinese bunkhouse from 1915 is the last of its kind on the coast.

The buildings keep their own hours, so some may be shut, but the boardwalks and the view are the point. Then cut back through the village, a few blocks of 1900s shopfronts around Moncton Street, for coffee or a look at the shops.

Finish where the boats tie up. Pajo's, a family business since 1985, runs a fish and chips stand on Steveston Wharf, and you eat on the dock with the working fleet around you. Order wild Pacific cod or halibut in tempura-style batter with fries, and expect the gulls to take an interest.

In the wet season you may end up eating standing up, so bring a hood; if the weather is foul, the village has other fish and chip shops a few blocks away. From here the Steveston buses run back to Brighouse and the Canada Line.