[Chewy734]

This was my first time in the Pacific Northwest, and visiting Vancouver was my first stop. This is where I took the most number of photos (about half of the total 1600+ images), so it took a while to go through all of them. Vancouver is a phenomenal city... a metropolis, but at the same time didn't have the typical traffic you would see in comparable cities in the US. The air was clean, the skies were clear, and the entire time we were there it didn't rain a single drop!

Around the City of Vancouver

There were a lot of tall buildings around the city. The interesting part was that almost every street in the city had dedicated bike lanes, which was really cool. I guess Vancouver's Mayor is an avid bicyclist and is helping with the cause. Here are some photos at Coal Harbor.











Afterwards, we went to visit the Kitsilano Beach area. At that point in time, the cold weather started to become unbearable, so I was forced to buy a new hat and gloves, since I forgot to pack them. Regardless, that area was pretty cool. There were a lot of nice houses, similar to those across the water in West Vancouver. Here are some panoramas from the beach area.





Next, we visited the Gastown area, which was named after a seaman "Gassy" who opened up the area's first saloon. Now, it's a pretty hip area with several high end stores and nice restaurants.







There were a lot of steam vents in the area that you could see. The most notable one is the famous steam clock. Originally, it was a large steam vent on the road where a lot of homeless people used to gather around during winter. To help in dispersing those people from the area, the city decided to build this clock and have the steam vent near the top to maintain its functional use.





Finally, after all the walking, we decided to take a small break at a really good coffee shop and drank some Matcha chai.



Vancouver City Walking Tour

The next day, we decided to take this walking tour with Tour Guys. I highly recommend their tours, as they are very knowledgeable and friendly, and it's a great way to see the city!

Below is Christ Church. Although it's only about 120 years old, it's still the oldest church in Vancouver. It was supposed to be torn down to build a high rise, but a loophole in the city law allowed it to be saved. Apparently, you can buy the air in Vancouver... yes, I'm not joking!

What happened was that the city put a restriction on how high you can build (apparently 35 floors) to make for a nicer shoreline. This business wanted to build higher, and found a loophole where if they purchase the land next to it, they can use its "air" to build higher on their plot.

In this example, the business next door purchased the church's land, and since the church isn't very tall, the amount of air above the church was displaced to their original lot next door. Thus, they could create a building ~65 floors high. If it makes you feel any better, they leased the church to the congregation for $1/month.



Anyways, there were many places like this around the city, where there was a really tall building next to a really short one.





This was the tallest building in Vancouver. I could barely get this monstrosity in a single frame at 17mm, even from far away.





There were many sculptures and other artwork around the city.







This was an interesting building called the Qube. If any of you guys remember the hit 80s TV show MacGyver? Well, this is where the "Phoenix Foundation" was based! But, that's not what makes it interesting. It was build from the top down! How? Well, they built a center column as shown in the logo, and then placed concrete on the sides from the top all the way down. This is just one of three buildings supposedly made with the center column architectural design. Can you guess either of the other two?





Once we arrived at this park, I saw these various sculptures of the artist making weird faces in different poses. It looked pretty cool, and here are some of them.







So, what two things strike you as being odd in this picture below?



If you guessed palm trees as being one of them, you are right! Although palm trees are obviously not indigenous to this region, it is one of the few places this far north where it can grow. The other weird item is the tree near the top of the building. Although a lot of the new skyscrapers have garden areas at the rooftop, this tree was planted to designate where the original tall skyscrapers used to be back in the day. This way, the historical tall buildings could be easily recognized.



I had no idea what this next piece of art was. So, I literally had to take a picture of the sign describing it so I remembered. Sadly, it still doesn't make much sense to me.





Finally, I took a ferry ride over to Granville Island. There were a lot of breweries there, as well as a large fresh produce market.

I liked the way this construction company painted their cement trucks, so I took a picture of it.



Pier 32 is a pretty well-known area that contained some expensive house boats. The funny part about this area is that if the owner needed to clean their house on the outside, they had to physically turn their house around on the docks 360 degrees to clean all sides.





Since we were here during the Fall season, I had to take a photo of quite possibly the most colorful tree I saw on this trip.



Finally, here are some panoramas of the harbor. This first is from Granville Island, and the second is from the shores of Vancouver.





Stanley Park

There was a reason why this place was listed on any travel site as one of the best places to visit in Vancouver. It is larger than the famous Central Park, and is probably larger than downtown Vancouver itself. Although we only spent half a day at the park, we could've easily spent a day and not seen all of it. I won't comment on the photos, since they speak for themselves.

























Lynn Canyon

On the way to the Sea to Sky Highway, there were a few places we wanted to stop. This was one of them, since they had a well-known bridge that we could walk across. Unfortunately, I am afraid of heights, but I still mustered enough courage to cross the bridge twice. However, I wasn't brave enough to take any photos while on the bridge itself.



There was a cafe inside the lodge that was closed, so we weren't able to get my coffee fix for the morning.





Cleveland Dam

On the way out, I noticed a sign for a dam with the same name of the city we live in. How could we not go to check it out? We weren't disappointed. The views from the park area were picturesque and I was able to stitch together several panoramas.







Grouse Mountain

Our next stop was the famous ski area atop Grouse Mountain. This ski lift took us almost a mile up the mountain.



At the top there were a lot of walking trails.









There was a nice grizzly bear habitat there. But, it was nothing like the two wild grizzly bears we saw at Olympic Park and Whistler later that day.















I couldn't figure out which panorama I liked more, so here are both of them.





This was a humorous sign I found around the lodge.



Inside the lodge there was a pretty cool map of Vancouver from 1898.



Sea to Sky Highway

Finally, we were on the road to the sky, so to speak. Although we didn't go all the way up on BC-99, we made it to Whistler. The point of this excursion is not the destination, but the drive to get there. Although it's not as windy as the Road to Hana in Maui, the views are more spectacular. All of the road photos were taken from within the car.











































The next few photos are from Tantalus Point on the way back down from Whistler.











It was getting pretty late and the fog was settling in. I edited this photo differently just because I like the way it looks.



Olympic Park

On the way to Whistler, we briefly stopped at Olympic Park where they had the Winter Olympics just this year. When we were touring the city, the walking guide told us that pretty much everything from the Olympics was taken apart and removed, except for the flame and the Olympic clock. Recently, even the Olympic clock was removed in the city. When I arrived at Olympic Village, it was desolate and full of only a handful of tourists (it was a "busy" day). I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to see that it was very desolate and not well-maintained.





The Inukshuk is an Inuit stone landmark to describe that someone was here and it was a safe passage. It was the official logo that Vancouver used this year for the Winter Olympics.











Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort

We finally ended up here at the world-famous ski resort. The lodges were gigantic and luxurious from the looks of it. Despite being near the end of the off-season, there were still many people walking around.













Final Thoughts

Even though this is my last photo blog from my trip, Vancouver was the first city we visited on this trip last month to the Pacific Northwest. Not to knock on the beautiful Seattle and Portland cities, but I believe I saved the best for last.

Since I live in Cleveland, traveling to Toronto is an almost yearly adventure for me. I've visited Toronto during all seasons of the year, and I've got to say that the winters are brutal. Two years ago we visited Quebec City, Montreal, and Ottawa. I loved the historical feel of those cities. However, once again, I'm sure the winters there are brutal. On the other hand, Vancouver seems pretty temperate all year round, and the outdoors nature aspect of the city really appealed to me. The clean air, the nice breezes, and the beautiful backdrops makes Vancouver one my favorite all-time cities to visit. I could see myself living there at some point in my life.

That being said, I would rank Portland just behind Vancouver. It was a very nice and livable city. The food was awesome, and the sights and sounds were fantastic as well. Seattle was a close third, mainly because it felt like I was literally walking uphill everywhere I went. There was a ton of fog, and the traffic was pretty bad overall. However, I still liked all three cities much more than Cleveland, and I can't wait to visit them again!

[bosstones]

Nice pix, chewy! I like the panoramas in particular. Hmmm....this just might be changing my view of Canada, which is largely formed based on South Park and hockey stereotypes. j/k to all you Canadians.

[Chewy734]

Thanks Jeff! Some of those panoramas are 5+ photos stitched together. Thank god for PTGui, otherwise I'd have spent a day just working on each of those.

[chinoxs203]

nice pics.. it seems like everywhere you look there are mountains.