VancouverTravel Guide

Start with the classic: rent a bike near Coal Harbour and ride the Stanley Park seawall anticlockwise — the mandatory direction — past the totem poles at Brockton Point, under the Lions Gate Bridge, and around to the sunset-facing sands of Third Beach.

The drive alone justifies the day: around two hours north along Howe Sound, with fjord, forest and granite walls the whole way.

At the eastern edge of North Vancouver, the village of Deep Cove sits on a fjord-still arm of Indian Arm.

Halfway to Whistler, Squamish packs in Shannon Falls — one of British Columbia's tallest waterfalls — the sheer granite face of the Stawamus Chief, and the Sea to Sky Gondola, which lifts you to a summit lodge, suspension bridge and view over Howe Sound that seems computer-generated.

In West Vancouver, Lighthouse Park protects some of the oldest trees near the city — Douglas firs several centuries old — on granite headlands around the 1912 Point Atkinson lighthouse.

Mount Pleasant's craft breweries pour some of Canada's best beer within a few walkable blocks, and in summer the region's night markets fire up the skewers-and-neon end of the spectrum.

Yaletown's converted warehouses hold the city's boutique energy — the Opus made its name here as Vancouver's design-hotel pioneer — with restaurant rows and the False Creek mini-ferries at the bottom of the street.

Special occasion: Rosewood Hotel Georgia or the Pacific Rim.