VANCOUVER · CANADA
Where the Coast Mountains meet the sea.
Stanley Park and the seawall, Capilano's rainforest canyons, float planes off the harbour and orcas in the Salish Sea. Plus the big days out to Whistler, Victoria and the Butchart Gardens, and the best of the city in between.
Only here
Things you can really only do here.
Plenty of cities have a harbour and a mountain backdrop. A rainforest canyon twenty minutes from downtown, float planes off the city seafront and orca pods in the strait belong to this stretch of coast.
Rainforest canyon
Capilano & the Canyon
Twenty minutes from downtown, a 137-metre footbridge sways seventy metres above the Capilano River, strung between cliffs of old-growth Douglas fir. A cliff-edge walkway is cantilevered out over the gorge and a treetops walk threads between the canopy. Few major cities keep this much rainforest at their back door.
- 1 Capilano Suspension Bridge Park Ticket
- 2 Vancouver Tour: Stanley Park, Granville Island & Capilano Bridge
- 3 Vancouver City Sightseeing Tour: Capilano Suspension Bridge & Vancouver Lookout
Off the harbour
Float Plane From Downtown
Coal Harbour runs as a working airport on the water. Float planes taxi out between the yachts and the seawall, lift off the surface in the middle of the city, and bank over the freighters in English Bay toward the mountains. Taking off from the sea in the heart of downtown is about as Vancouver as it gets.
- 1 Vancouver Panorama Scenic Seaplane Tour
- 2 Vancouver: Scenic Panorama Seaplane Tour & Suspension Bridge
- 3 Vancouver: Extended Scenic Panorama Seaplane Tour
The Salish Sea
Orcas off the Coast
The strait between Vancouver and Vancouver Island is home to orca, both the salmon-eating resident pods and the marine-mammal-hunting transients, alongside humpbacks, sea lions and porpoises. Half a day out on the water in a covered catamaran or an open zodiac puts you in their range, naturalist aboard.
- 1 Vancouver Half-Day Whale Watching Adventure with Free Photos
- 2 Vancouver: Covered Whale Watching Adventure with Free Photos
- 3 Whale-Watching Tour from Vancouver
Start here
The one most Vancouver trips are built around.
If you only book one thing before you arrive, more travellers reach for this than anything else on the coast.
The classics
Vancouver's Most Popular Tours
Capilano, the harbour, Whistler and the whale-watching boats. The days most visitors come to the coast for.
Where to begin
The experiences a Vancouver trip is built around.
Capilano's canyon, the Whistler run up the Sea to Sky, the Victoria day trip, the whale-watching boats, the city tours and the harbour cruises. The handful of days most trips are planned around, and the best way to do each.
The big day trip
How to reach Victoria and the Butchart Gardens.
Victoria sits across the Strait of Georgia on Vancouver Island, so the how is half the day. Three ways across, depending on the time you have and the budget you bring.
Granville Island & Gastown
A city that eats off the dock and the ocean.
Vancouver eats fresh and eats the world: the stalls of the Granville Island Public Market, dim sum and night markets from the largest Chinatown in Canada, salmon pulled from the same waters you cruised that morning, and the craft-brewery rooms behind Gastown’s cobblestones. A walking food tour is the quickest way into all of it.
Read the guide: the best food tours in Vancouver →The green heart of the city
A thousand acres of rainforest, ringed by the sea.
Stanley Park is bigger than Central Park and still half wild: cedar and hemlock forest, the totem poles at Brockton Point, beaches and a heron colony, all wrapped by a ten-kilometre seawall you can walk, cycle or roll. Horse-drawn trolleys and guided rides loop the lot, with the downtown towers on one side and the North Shore mountains on the other.
See the Stanley Park tours →Burrard Inlet
A working harbour with mountains for a backdrop.
Few cities sit this tight against the wild. Container ships and float planes share the water with kayakers and dinner cruises, the green span of the Lions Gate Bridge links downtown to the forested North Shore, and the Coast Mountains rise straight out of the sea behind it all. The best way to take it in is from the deck of a boat.
Harbour cruises & boat trips →The Sea to Sky
One of the great drives, ending in the alpine.
Highway 99 hugs the fjord of Howe Sound out of the city, climbs past Shannon Falls and the Sea to Sky Gondola at Squamish, and tops out in the mountain village of Whistler two hours north. Coach day trips, gondola combos and small-group tours run the road, stopping for the waterfalls and the lookouts the bus drivers know.
- 1 From Vancouver: Whistler & Sea to Sky Gondola with Shannon Falls
- 2 Whistler, Sea to Sky Gondola, and Shannon Falls Day Trip
- 3 Whistler and Sea to Sky Gondola Tour + Shannon Falls
By elevation
Sea level to summit, in one day.
Vancouver's trick is its vertical range. You can paddle the harbour in the morning, walk a rainforest canyon by lunch and be on a mountaintop by dusk. Pick how high you want to go.
At sea level
Out on the water.Harbour cruises under the Lions Gate Bridge, the seawall by boat, and whale-watching runs into the Salish Sea.
Into the rainforest
Up among the cedars.Suspension bridges over the canyon, treetop walkways, and the temperate rainforest that climbs the North Shore.
Above the peaks
Off the dock and into the sky.Float planes lifting straight off the harbour, the Grouse skyride, and flightseeing over the glaciers and the inlets.
Grouse Mountain
A peak you can be on top of by lunch.
Fifteen minutes from downtown, a gondola climbs 1,200 metres to the top of Grouse Mountain. Up top there are grizzly bears in a wildlife refuge, a lumberjack show, ziplines and a chairlift to the summit, and a view that runs from the city and the harbour clear out to Vancouver Island on a clear day.
See all 10 Grouse Mountain tours →By place
The city and the coast, six ways.
Stanley Park for the rainforest and the seawall. Gastown for the oldest streets. The North Shore for the canyons. Grouse for the summit. Whistler up the Sea to Sky. Victoria across the water.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Float plane if you want the coast from above. Cruise if you want the harbour slow. A whale-watching boat if you want the open water. Or see the city on foot, on two wheels, or fork in hand.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
Never been? Here is a long weekend that hits the essentials without a wasted hour.
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