After a recent visit, Director David Wickers gives his top ten recommendations:
1. Eat seafood, including local specialities wild Sockeye salmon and Arctic char. I’d recommend top chef Frank Pabst's Blue Water Café and Raw Bar on Hamilton in Yaletown, the city’s warehouse district. It’s one of several old buildings transformed into a ‘bricks and beams’ bars and restaurants. Be sure to book: 604 688 8078
2. Rent a bike and explore Stanley Park, Vancouver's giant green heart. The 1000 acre wilderness features giant Douglas firs, cedars, hemlock, spruce and other confers. Follow the 6.5 mile sea wall trail that encircles the park, passing beneath the soaring Lion’s Gate suspension bridge across the Burrard Inlet and the park’s famous collection of totem poles.
3. Become a ‘Grouse Grinder,’ someone who climbs to the 1250m summit of Grouse Mountain. If you don’t fancy the steep 1.8 mile trek, you can go up the easy way, by gondola.
4. Buy crafts, including First Nations’ works, on Granville Island. The bonsai 37 acre neighbourhood is reached by bath-tub size ferries that shuttle back and forth across False Creek from the end of Hornby Street on the 'mainland.' Granville is a mix of terrific food market, cafes, galleries, restaurants, a kids’ market, theatres, bike and kayak rentals, a children's market and chandleries.
5. Go to Gastown. According to local lore, the cobbled streets are “for the good, the bad and the ugly” but with its Victorian houses now being bought by the city’s high flyers, it's getting gooder by the week. There’s a particular buzz in Salt, found on the still shabby Blood Alley (which got its name from the butchers who used to trade there). The menu couldn’t be simpler – wine, cheese and cold cuts – but you do need to book (604 633 1912).
6. Escape for the weekend to the Sunshine Coast, just a 20 minute hop by floatplane. For a taste of Canada at its natural best, get the pilot to drop you off at the jetty belonging to the West Coast Wilderness Lodge where you can hike, fish, ride the rapids, seakayak, heli-hike, mountain bike or just soak up the magnificent panorama of mountains and water from the resort’s hot tub.
7. Hit the beach at Kitsilano, or ‘Kits’ for those in the know, the old hippy now trendy neighbourhood. The water’s safe for swimming although there’s also a heated saltwater Lido pool.
8. Visit the Capilano Hatchery where you can watch salmon climb ‘ladders’ as they make their way upstream to spawn (best seen late summer). Some three million fish a year are nurtured here before being released into the river as ‘fingerlings.’
9. Browse the stalls in Chinatown’s Night Market on summer weekend evenings, with sights and smells more Canton than Canada. Vancouver has the third biggest Chinatown in the west (after New York and San Francisco).
10. Stay at the Shangri-la, the newest hotel in town and one of the first ventures beyond Asia for the Chinese owned chain of luxury hotels. It has just over 100 rooms, an outstanding Michelin chef Jean Georges Vongerichten restaurant and a Chi spa. Three nights with Bridge & Wickers (020 7483 6555) starts at £342pp, excluding flights. British Airways which operates two flights a day to Vancouver.
