The Morning I Understood Why People Never Leave Vancouver
I'd been warned. Multiple people had told me, with the earnestness of religious converts, that Vancouver would ruin other cities for me. I smiled politely and assumed they were just doing that thing Canadians do where they're enthusiastic about everything.
Then I rented a bike on Denman Street at 6:45AM on a Tuesday in July, pedaled onto the Stanley Park seawall, and within ten minutes I understood exactly what they meant.
The seawall is 9 km of paved path circling Stanley Park — a 405-hectare wilderness that sits at the tip of downtown like a green exclamation point. You cycle counter-clockwise (that's the designated direction), and the views change every few hundred meters.
First it's the downtown skyline behind you, glass towers catching the early light. Then the Lions Gate Bridge appears, suspension cables glinting. Then the North Shore mountains — snow still on the peaks in July — reflected in water so still it looks like someone Photoshopped it.
I stopped at Brockton Point to look at the First Nations totem poles. Then at Prospect Point for that lion-shaped rock across the water. Then at Third Beach, where the path curves through old-growth forest so dense the light goes green and cathedral-quiet.
The bike rental was $10 CAD per hour from Spokes Bicycle Rentals on Denman. The experience was priceless, etc. But genuinely — I've been to a lot of beautiful cities and I've never had a single activity so perfectly encapsulate what a place is about.
Vancouver is mountains meeting ocean meeting city, and the seawall is where all three collide.
I spent the rest of that day in a state of mild disbelief. Took the tiny Aquabus ferry (~$4 CAD) to Granville Island and wandered the public market for two hours. Lee's Donuts. The chowder at The Stock Market. Oyama Sausage. Fifty-plus food vendors under one roof, and not a single bad bite among them.
Then I walked the seawall east past the geodesic dome of Science World (it looks like a golf ball designed by an architect having their best day), through Olympic Village, and into Gastown.
Gastown is Vancouver's oldest neighborhood — cobblestone streets and the steam clock that whistles every 15 minutes on Water Street. But it's not a museum piece. The Diamond and Pourhouse are two of the city's best cocktail bars, tucked into buildings that have been standing since the 1890s. I had an old fashioned at The Diamond and watched the steam clock go off and thought: this is a city that knows how to layer the old with the new.
Day two I crossed the Burrard Inlet to the North Shore, and the whole trip shifted into a different gear.
Capilano Suspension Bridge Park costs $65 CAD and part of me wanted to be cynical about it. A tourist attraction? A suspension bridge? But then you step onto the thing — 137 meters long, swaying 70 meters above the Capilano River — and your body overrides your cynicism. The treetop walkways afterward, seven suspension bridges between Douglas fir canopy, had me walking slowly just to stay up there longer.
But here's the local tip I wish I'd known earlier: Lynn Canyon Park has a free suspension bridge, free swimming holes, and free old-growth forest trails. Take bus #228 from Lonsdale Quay. The 30 Foot Pool — a deep emerald pool surrounded by boulders — was where I swam in water cold enough to make my chest hurt, surrounded by forest that's been growing since before my country existed.
No entry fee. No parking fee. Just a bus ride and a trail and one of the most beautiful swimming holes I've ever found.
The afternoon of day two, I went up Grouse Mountain. The Skyride gondola costs $70 CAD and takes you to 1,250 meters. At the top: 360-degree views of the city, the ocean, the islands, and mountains in every direction.
But the real move — and I didn't do it, I need to confess — is hiking the Grouse Grind. A 2.9 km trail straight up the mountain face that locals call "Mother Nature's Stairmaster." Takes about 1.5 hours. Free to hike up, gondola down is included.
I watched people summit the Grind while I stood at the top with my gondola ticket, and they all had this look on their faces — wrecked and triumphant — that made me jealous. Next time.
I took the SeaBus back from Lonsdale Quay to Waterfront Station. It's a 12-minute ferry ride across the harbor, and it gives you this postcard view of the downtown skyline that I've now seen on every Vancouver tourism website. The difference is that in person, with wind off the water and mountains behind the buildings, it doesn't look like a postcard. It looks like an answer to a question about what a city could be.
On my third day I went south. Kitsilano Beach has a heated saltwater pool (open in summer, free) and views of downtown and the mountains. Brunch at Sophie's Cosmic Cafe on West 4th — eggs benny for $18 CAD in a vintage-cluttered room where every surface has a toy or a tchotchke or a painting from the '70s.
Then to UBC for the Museum of Anthropology. Arthur Erickson's building is extraordinary on its own — massive glass walls framing views of the mountains — but the collection inside is the real reason to come. Pacific Northwest First Nations art: totem poles, masks, bentwood boxes, ceremonial regalia. Bill Reid's "The Raven and the First Men" — a 4-meter-high yellow cedar sculpture — is the centerpiece and it's one of the most powerful pieces of art I've seen in any museum anywhere.
Entry is $18 CAD. Free on Thursdays 5-9PM.
And then. Below UBC, down 473 steps, lies Wreck Beach. Vancouver's clothing-optional beach. I'll leave the details to your imagination, but regardless of what you wear (or don't), the setting is stunning: wild, forest-backed, with vendors selling food and drinks on the sand.
I left Vancouver the way the warned people said I would: comparing every city to it.
It's not perfect. Housing costs are obscene (a condo in Kitsilano costs more than a house in most American cities). The rain from October to March is legendary — 160+ days per year. And the Downtown Eastside around East Hastings between Main and Abbott has visible homelessness and drug use that's confronting.
But the bones of this city — mountains, ocean, forest, and a population that treats access to nature as a civic right — make it something special. The seawall is free. Lynn Canyon is free. The swimming holes are free. The sunsets over English Bay, where locals gather with blankets and gelato from Bella Gelateria, are free.
For another city where nature and urban life coexist beautifully, Cape Town offers a similar combination — Table Mountain looming over the city, ocean on both sides, and some of the best hiking you'll find inside a metropolis.
Vancouver didn't ruin other cities for me. But it did give me a new standard for what a city can feel like when the natural world and the built world are in conversation instead of competition.
I'm going back in September.
Getting there: Canada Line SkyTrain from YVR airport to downtown in 25 minutes, ~$10 CAD including the $5 YVR AddFare. Buy a Compass Card at the airport station for all transit. Taxi ~$35-40 CAD. You don't need a car — transit, SeaBus, and Uber cover everything.
