The Top Things to Do in Vancouver 2020

As you walk gingerly out on to the world's longest (140m/460ft) and highest (70m/230ft) suspension bridge, swaying gently over the roiling waters of tree-lined Capilano Canyon, remember that the thick steel cables you are gripping are safely embedded in huge concrete blocks on either side. That should steady your feet - unless the teenagers are stamping across to scare the oldsters... The region's most popular attraction - hence the summertime crowds and relentless tour buses - the grounds here also include rainforest walks, totem poles, and a swinging network of smaller bridges strung between the trees, called Treetops Adventure. This series of open-ended suspension bridges link eight towering Douglass fir trees. At heights of up to 25m/80ft above the forest floor, the bridges have viewing platforms where Capilano’s naturalist hold court on the area’s ecological attributes.

The Lions Gate Bridge spans Burrard Inlet, connecting North and West Vancouver with the City Centre, via Stanley Park. Originally opened in 1938, the bridge isn’t just a major transportation hub for Vancouver, but it’s also a National Historic Site of Canada. Even the impressive stats—the bridge is about a mile (1.5 km) long, its two suspension towers are 365 feet (111 meters) tall and the bridge deck sits 200 feet (61 m) above the water—barely do the bridge justice. From Ambleside Park, in West Vancouver, the view of Lions Gate Bridge against a backdrop of downtown Vancouver truly shows its immense scale. It’s even more spectacular at night, as the entire bridge is covered in decorative LED lighting.

The magnificent Stanley Park certainly enjoys one of the world’s most breathtaking settings: the park is surrounded on three sides by the ocean and loomed over by the snow-capped North Shore mountains. The park’s perimeter seawall stroll is one of the best ways to spend your time. Stanley Park is big enough to have quiet parts whenever you’re seeking seclusion, while wildlife lovers can always spot raccoons on the ground or eagles high in the trees. Within its 1,000 acres/400 hectares you’ll find forests of cedar, hemlock and fir, mingled with meadows, lakes, and cricket pitches. There are also a couple of excellent beaches – ideal spots to perch on a driftwood log with a picnic and catch a kaleidoscopic sunset over the water. But the park isn’t just for dewy-eyed nature lovers; other highlights include the collection of totem poles by the shore, Second Beach Swimming Pool, and Vancouver Aquarium.

Although it's officially on a peninsula, the abundant water surrounding downtown Vancouver can make it feel like an island. It is, today, the center of commerce and business for British Columbia but, even historically, the downtown area has always been a significant meeting point for trade and culture. In modern history, the area wasn't permanently settled by outsiders until 1862 when the city was chosen to be the terminus for the transcontinental railroad. As Vancouver grew, a number of neighborhoods began to develop within the city. Gastown is one of the oldest parts of the city and remains a tourist attraction. It's here where the world's first steam-powered clock still stands in working condition. Other significant neighborhoods worth visiting within the downtown core include Robson Street, Coal Harbour and Yaletown. There is also a prominent Chinatown in downtown Vancouver – the largest in Canada.

One of the best places to orient yourself, especially if this is your first trip to Vancouver, is Canada Place. Built for Expo '86, this iconic, postcard-friendly landmark is hard to miss: its five tall Teflon sails that jut into the sky over Burrard Inlet resemble a giant sailing ship. Now a cruise-ship terminal and convention center, it's also a pier where you can stroll out over the waterfront, watch the splashing floatplanes, and catch some spectacular sea-to-mountain views. Around the perimeter of Canada Place is a promenade, where you can gaze out at the North Shore mountains standing tall across Burrard Inlet. You can also see nearby Stanley Park and its famous Seawall Promenade. Walk to the other end of the promenade and you’ll be rewarded with great city views, including the historic low-rise tops of Gastown, where Vancouver was first settled. Inside the building is FlyOver Canada, a cool simulated flight attraction that takes you across Canada.

The centrepiece of Vancouver's gleaming downtown waterfront is made of graceful white "sails," which create a translucent pavilion above the Canada Place Cruise Ship Terminal, gateway to the majestic glacier-carved fjords of the northern Pacific Coast. The city itself is stunning, a sparkling metropolis of glass spires and lush city parks atop the Burrard Peninsula, cradled in the snow-capped North Shore Mountains, just visible in the distance. More than half a million happy passengers cruise through Vancouver Port each year, headed to Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and Alaska, some of the most fantastic coastal scenery in the world. Yet many of these intrepid travellers soon realize, after spending only a day or two here in Vancouver, that this charming Canadian city is the place to which they most want to return.

Brimming with arts and crafts studios, bars and restaurants with eye-popping views, Granville Island is a popular spot for visitors and locals alike. Though it’s really a peninsula, jutting out into False Creek, the island draws those who come to wander the pedestrian-friendly alleyways while enjoying the sounds of the buskers and the sights along the waterfront. One of the highlights is the Granville Island Public Market, where you can trawl the deli-style food stalls and artisan stands. Art lovers can wander through the three galleries of up-and-coming artists at the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design. For the under-10 set, the Kids Market bristles with kid-friendly stores, mostly of the toy variety. For a little respite, entice the kids away from the shops and head to the huge Granville Island Water Park.

A highly evocative neighborhood of excellent character bars and a smattering of good restaurants, Gastown is Vancouver’s best old-town area. The Victorian era resonates in the cobblestone streets, antique lamps, and old buildings, adding to the neighborhood’s distinctive ambiance. Gastown is the place to pay your respects to Vancouver’s founding father, "Gassy" Jack Deighton – a bronze statue of him salutes Maple Tree Square. On Water Street stands the famous Steam Clock, a charming little artifact, built to resemble London’s Big Ben. The neighborhood has also become a hotbed for local designer-owned shops, drawing a new crowd of regulars to the area. It’s also place to look for a new art gallery or a piece of beautiful, hand-carved First Nations art in one of the galleries along Water and Hastings streets. Microbreweries and brewpubs have sprung up across the city in recent years, and many of the best beer havens are in Gastown. Steamworks is the most accessible.

Locals, international tourists, and recent immigrants - try and count the number of accents you catch as you stroll along here - throng the hotels, eateries, and shops of Robson Street, Vancouver's de facto shopping promenade. Stand at the corner of Burrard and Robson and watch its colorful parade of shoppers and shops unfold. Shoppers come to browse and buy the high-end clothing and accessory shops that line Robson Street. While most shops are of the ubiquitous chain-store variety, many boutiques showcase up-and-coming designers. It’s also worth heading to the Stanley Park end of the strip, where you'll find a modern “mini-Asia” of subterranean internet cafés, hole-in-the-wall noodle eateries, and discreet karaoke bars populated by homesick Japanese and Korean language students. It's a great area for a cheap-and-cheerful, authentically South Asian lunch.

Calling itself the "Peak of Vancouver", Grouse Mountain offers stunning views from its mountaintop perch. On a clear day, you can see Vancouver’s downtown towers, shimmering in the water below you, as well as Stanley Park, Frazer Valley, and east across the Strait of Georgia to Vancouver Island. In summer, the Skyride gondola whisks you up to its 1,110m (3,642-ft.) summit, where passengers can access restaurants, lumberjack shows, alpine hiking trails and a grizzly bear refuge. You can also avoid the gondola and harden your calf muscles on the Grouse Grind, a steep 2.9km/1.8 mi wilderness trek that takes most people around 90 minutes.

Exotic sights, sounds, and aromas pervade North America’s third-largest Chinatown. In this evocative area, you’ll find families bargaining over durian fruit in a flurry of Cantonese; shops redolent of sweet-and-sour fish; and street vendors selling silk, jade, and Hello Kitty footstools. The steamy-windowed wonton restaurants, butchers with splayed barbecued pigs, and ubiquitous firecracker-red awnings will make you think for a moment that you’re in Hong Kong. Start your trek at Millennium Gate, the official entry into Chinatown. Head under the gate, and spend some time strolling the tranquil pools, intriguing limestone formations, and gnarly pine trees that fill Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. After strolling the garden, nip next door to the Chinese Cultural Centre Museum & Archives. Across the street, on Carrall Street stands the Sam Kee Building, the world’s thinnest office building.

Located at Canada Place in downtown Vancouver, FlyOver Canada is a 4D flight simulation, and one of Vancouver's hottest new tourist attractions. Essentially, FlyOver Canada offers visitors to the city a chance to experience a four dimensional journey via helicopter to all of Canada's most famous sights during a thrilling 30 minute virtual adventure. The FlyOver includes a pre-show presented by Movement Factory called Uplift!, followed by a quick briefing in the boarding zone, and then the Ultimate Flying Ride, which is the highlight of the show and takes a total of 8 minutes to experience. FlyOver Canada takes visitors on a beautifully choreographed areal tour of Niagara Falls, the Arctic, the Prairies and many more amazing uniquely Canadian destinations. It is visually stunning and leaves visitors in awe of the beauty found within the borders of Canada. If you've never visited a 4D ride or show, it's an exciting experience.

Stanley Park's biggest draw, the aquarium is home to 9,000 water-loving creatures - including sharks, dolphins, Amazonian caimans, and a somewhat shy octopus. There's also a small, walk-through rainforest area full of birds, butterflies, and turtles. Check out the iridescent jellyfish tank and the two sea otters that eat the way everyone should: lying on their backs using their chests as plates. Beluga whales whistle and blow water at onlookers in the icy-blue Arctic Canada exhibit, while in the Amazon rainforest, an hourly rainstorm falls in an atrium filled with three-toed sloths, stunning blue and green poison tree frogs, and even piranhas. For a local perspective, check out the Pacific Canada exhibit, where you can see Pacific salmon, giant Pacific Octopus, Stellar see lions, and a Pacific white-sided dolphin.

The Capilano Salmon Hatchery is a fish farm that was established in 1971 to save the strongly declining salmon stocks in the Capilano River, which was then threatened by the construction of the Cleveland Dam. Today, the hatchery not only breeds Coho Salmon and Steelhead Trout, but has also introduced Chinook salmon into the system to provide for the ceremonial as well as food fishery of the Squamish First Nation. The facility is also open to the public and invites people to learn more about Canada’s most popular fish. Visitors are guided around the hatchery largely via a self-guided tour and witness the fascinating and tragic life cycle of the salmon, beginning with their development from eggs to their release into the river in spring and their heroic efforts as adults to reach their spawning grounds upriver, after which they promptly die. Displays and exhibits explain the whole fascinating process as well as inform about the hatchery’s operations.

Surrounded by the city’s Seawall and containing one of Vancouver’s most popular beaches, English Bay is at the heart of Vancouver’s water related activities. In warm weather, kayaking, fishing, and even scuba diving all take place in the waters here. English Bay Beach, also called First Beach, is the most populated beach area in the city. With palm trees and plentiful sand, English Bay Beach is the go-to spot for sunbathing and beach volleyball when the sun is shining. It is also one of the best places to go swimming. Annually two of the city’s largest events take place here: the Celebration of Light fireworks competition in July and the Polar Bear Swim in January. Many laid back, open-air restaurants and patios dot the area around the water, and the notable sunset and sunrise skies are what draw many visitors. With views of the surrounding mountains and coastline, English Bay offers some of the best natural scenery in Vancouver.

Resembling a space ship that landed atop a downtown office tower, the Vancouver Lookout gives you panoramic 360-degree views of the city and surrounding landscape. Perhaps befitting the observation tower’s space age design, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, was also the first visitor to the Vancouver Lookout, inaugurating the tower in 1977. Though the 30-story structure now seems almost petite compared to Vancouver’s newest skyscrapers, it’s a great place to get oriented to the city with vistas to Stanley Park, the North Shore mountains, and on a clear day, all the way to the Olympic Peninsula. You can explore the views on your own – there are informational plaques in front of every window – or ask one of the guides for a complimentary tour. You can also join one of the free 20-minute tours that run throughout the day. Your admission ticket is valid all day, so you can scope out the daylight views and return later for the sunset.

The VanDusen Botanical Garden is a 55-acre botanical oasis in the center of Vancouver that showcases diverse plants from around the world. Not surprisingly, the garden is considered to be among the top public green spaces in North America. Among the rhododendron, magnolia and sino-Himalayan plants, you can also find plenty of art installations, such as beautifully carved totem poles and sculptures. Many visitors especially enjoy the cedar maze made up of 3,000 pyramidal cedars and if you get the chance, make sure to attend one of the seasonal festivals. Inspired by the natural environment around it, the visitor center is unquestionably an attraction of its own. It has strived to meet the Living Building Challenge, which means that it isn’t only constructed in an environmentally conscious design that draws on natural forms, but also uses renewable resources and achieves net-zero energy consumption.

Found within the current bounds of Vancouver's Stanley Park, Prospect Point is not only the highest point in the park and a great viewpoint of the harbor, but a place of significant history. In the late 1800s, boats traveling into Burrard Inlet were forced to pass extremely close to Prospect Point, as uninhibited water from the Capilano River plowed into the harbor, carrying with it silt and rock. The mineral-heavy flow further out caused the waters to be less buoyant, but crossing so close to the cliffs of Prospect Point wasn't without its risks either. In 1888, a ship called the S.S. Beaver ran aground on the rocks. It was then that the decision was made to put a warning light on the point to help guide ships through the passage. Some 25 years later, a signal station was built on the point to relay information to ships entering the inlet and, in 1948, the current Prospect Point Lighthouse was erected.

Pedestrian-friendly Yaletown is Vancouver’s "little SoHo", a former red-brick rail terminal turned into a warehouse district lined with swanky New York-style lofts and chichi boutiques. The focal point of the modern-day yuppie enclave exudes a hip and inviting atmosphere - especially at night, when its sophisticated drink and dine spots are packed to the rafters with the city’s beautiful people checking each other out. Walking along Yaletown streets provides a bounty of attractions. The neighborhood has plenty of pricey boutiques to window shops, art galleries to linger in, and lots of places to stop for lunch, coffee or a splurge-worth dinner. Some of the best seafood restaurants are here, as is Yaletown Brewing Company, where you can sample its home-brewed beer. If you’re curious about the area’s almost-forgotten rough-and-ready past, follow the old rail lines embedded in many of the streets and amble over to the Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre.

At the center of Vancouver lies a short protected inlet that separates the downtown from the rest of the city. Once a centuries old fishing village dismissed by its disconnection to the Vancouver Harbor, it is now a highly sought after residential and commercial area. False Creek sits peacefully by the water, which draws many boaters and kayakers. There is also a promenade that allows visitors to walk alongside the water and take in views of the city skyline and the surrounding sea. Many visitors hop on board one of the ferries that run along the water, stopping at trendy parts of the city such as Granville, The Village, and Yaletown. These neighborhoods all face False Creek, and offer some of the best restaurants, shops, and markets in Vancouver. Southeast False Creek was the site of the Athlete’s Village for the 2010 Olympic Games.

Get a bird’s-eye view of everything British Columbia, from mountains forests to oceans and rivers, aboard the Sea to Sky Gondola. The 10-minute ride takes up to eight passengers at a time just over 2,900 feet (885 meters) above sea level, all in a gondola with floor-to-ceiling glass windows for the very best views. Upon arrival at the top, there are a number of outdoor activities to choose from, including the Sky Pilot Suspension Bridge and various hiking trails. There are three easily accessible main viewing platforms to take in views of the coastal mountains and fjord, and the Summit Lodge Viewing Deck is the closest to the gondola’s unloading station. It’s attached to Summit Lodge, which has a restaurant and bar.

While the biggest reason for a visitor to head out to Horseshoe Bay might be the ferry terminal, the picturesque community of just 1,000 year-round residents is worth a trip all on its own. In addition to being the West Coast ferry terminus for BC Ferries going to Vancouver Island, Bowen Island and the Sunshine Coast, the little village located at the entrance to Howe Sound is also the starting point of the Sea to Sky highway, one of British Columbia’s most notable attractions. The coastal highway winds along the coast through Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton, offering world-class views of the region’s unique evergreen islands and tall mountains. Although Horseshoe Bay is mainly a bedroom community for nature-loving Vancouverites, it does offer a variety of unique shops, bistros, and a pub. The marina is home to boats big and small, and with the ocean at your feet and the North Shore mountains at your back, the outdoor opportunities are boundless.

Grizzly bears, a grey wolf, birds of prey and hummingbirds all live and play at the Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife. The refuge has plenty of interpretive programs, too, which allow visitors to learn about these exciting species and their habitats. The main attractions, undoubtedly, are the two gfrizzly bears, Grinder and Coola. Both were orphaned in 2011; Grinder was found along a logging road in BC’s Kootenay Mountains, while Coola was scooped up off the roadside near Bella Coola. At the Grouse Mountain Refuge for Endangered Wildlife, both bears coexist despite their unique personalities. A variety of interpretive programs, from the Bear Discovery tour to Breakfast with the Bears, help teach visitors all about these enormous animals. Alpha, the only grey wolf at Grouse Mountain, is often spotted right from the parking lot as he explores his personal protected habitat.

Vancouver’s Olympic Village, coming in at over 1,000,000 square feet in size, was built for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics hosted in the city in 2010. 1,000 units accommodated nearly 3,000 athletes, coaches, and personnel during the games. Construction took place over three years, and it is now a housing and retail space with a community center. It is one of the greenest building structures in the world, granting Vancouver its reputation as a leader in sustainable living. Built mostly in steel, the many elegant towers stand as modern icons of a growing city. The Olympic Village area is growing in population and popularity as a result. The neighborhood has a variety of excellent restaurants, as well as paths for walking and seafront views of the water. A walk along the seawall can run scenically alongside Vancouver's inner coastline from Coal Harbour to Kitsilano Beach.