Take it from a guy who loves to explore cities: Vancouver is one of the two or three best urban vacation spots on the continent.
When I think of many cities, I think first of faces, some of them purely imaginary.
Boston brings to mind an image I take for Paul Revere, but just beyond one shoulder is the smiling little Italian woman who once sold me an espresso- maker, and just over the other is a wan teenage hooker standing in a doorway.
Philadelphia is Ben Franklin, flanked by a dark, unshaven character in a dirty T-shirt. New Orleans is the ghostly face of pirate Jean Lafitte or the colorfully framed ebony visage of voodoo queen Marie Laveau.
Oddly, when I think of Vancouver, I think first of apartment-building balconies dripping bright red flowers; of a path meandering through a forest of huge evergreen trees; of a tiny, dusty shop stuffed with peculiar goods from China; a gorgeous stretch of ocean shore with five or six moving ships and a pair of kayakers in sight.
Only then do the faces appear: a busy Italian restaurateur with thick gray eyebrows that jump up and down; a rather prim, veddy English-looking saleswoman in a store selling Eskimo carvings; a Chinese family of 10 or 12, four generations around a big round table in a small restaurant, chatting cheerfully except for a young couple quarreling in stage whispers, ignored by the others.
Citizens come in many hues, wear a wide range of ethnic features and speak with many accents, but they seem pleasantly ordinary and ordinarily pleasant, like Midwesterners. Yet Vancouver is a memorable place.
The first thing that must strike a visitor to this city of about 1.3 million is the setting, which has to be one of the most gorgeous city sites in the world.
Vancouver is edged by the Fraser River, the sea and wooded mountains, some of them capped with snow almost year-round. There is a very large seaport and-rare in a port city-nine miles of clean public beach. In the heart of downtown Vancouver you are within walking distance of the shore, no more than a half-hour`s drive from mountains and forests.
There are about 160 parks in the city. One of them, 1,000-acre Stanley Park, is said to be the biggest city park in the world. Much of it is virgin rain forest, almost surrounded by ocean beaches. You can walk among the towering trees for hours and only occasionally meet other strollers. On one edge of the park is a lagoon that`s a nesting place for trumpeter swans, geese and other wildlife.
The park also has a good zoo, outdoor theater in summer, pitch-and-putt courses, ball fields and cricket pitches and a superb aquarium, with thousands of varieties of fish and other sea creatures and dolphin and killer-whale shows. You can rent bicycles, roller-skates and mopeds at several locations just outside the park. Near the zoo, you`ll find strolling musicians, magicians, mimes, jugglers and puppet shows.
Parks aside, Vancouver is as cosmopolitan as any other great seaport, but far cleaner and brighter than most. The heavily British history of the city is most evident in the flower gardens that brighten most residential areas and even, as I said, the balconies of many apartment buildings.
Two areas of Vancouver have become especially famous as tourist attractions.
One is Gastown, the city`s oldest section, which was given a major facelift in the late 1960s-with tourists in mind. It is a few square blocks of cutesy restaurants, smart shops and souvenir shops, brick sidewalks and cobblestone streets. It is worth a look, since the restoration was beautifully done and some of the stores are unusual. I found the crest and tartan of my mother`s tiny ancestral Scottish clan in a shop that sells only Scottish products.
Chinatown, the second-largest such enclave on the continent, is a few blocks away and more interesting. Like San Francisco`s slightly larger version, this is a real community, where most nontourist conversations are in Chinese, exotic foodstuffs are sold in open-door markets and people go about their business largely oblivious to gawking visitors. Restaurants, from cheap to expensive, are plentiful and mostly good.
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There are plenty of shops, some of which cater almost entirely to tourists and some of which mix tourist and resident trade. Much of the merchandise comes from mainland China. Some of it is junk, but there also are amazing bargains for people who like Oriental art and artifacts. You can pick up lovely small stone carvings and wonderfully detailed bamboo carvings for a few dollars.
Vancouver also offers good prices on the finest quality Eskimo carvings and prints.
Other attractions include a small but nice maritime museum, an excellent museum of anthropology and many art galleries. You can ride a catamaran ferry from downtown Vancouver to an area called the North Shore; ride a very modern aerial tram 3,700 feet to the top of Grouse Mountain for a panoramic view of the city; and ride the scenic Skytrain (an above-ground transit system) to the former provincial capital of New Westminster about half an hour from downtown Vancouver.
Eating is one of the great pleasures of Vancouver. The diversity of restaurants is greater than in many larger cities. Once, while strolling three or four blocks from the grand old Vancouver Hotel, I happened on a Mongolian restaurant.
You can follow guidebook recommendations or just take your chances-using eyes, nose and ears as guides-and probably dine just as well. And you don`t have to pay top dollar to get excellent cuisine in any of a dozen or more ethnic styles.
On our last visit to Vancouver, my son, daughter and I ate three times in an unpretentious Chinese restaurant near the north end of Robsonstrasse, a famous shopping street. Dinners cost us $5 to $9 each, and the food was superb.
As in any major city, the range of quality and prices in hotels and motels goes from flophouse to ”millionaires only.” At the upper levels are several hotels built within the last few years, but the one I like best is the Vancouver Hotel, a great old chateau-style railroad hotel with grand chandeliers and lovely dark wood in the public areas. But rooms without discounts start at $140.
Twice I`ve stayed, with my family, at a little apartment hotel at the far end of Robsonstrasse, where kitchenette, bedroom and sitting room with sofa-bed cost about $45 a night for three or four people. The furnishings in such places-there are several-run to plastic-covered chairs with chrome arms and legs, but the ones I`ve inhabited were clean and had good beds.
Night life in Vancouver is varied, but bar hours are a bit difficult to figure out. Some places are allowed to stay open any 14 hours between 9 a.m. and 2 a.m., others can be open from 7 p.m. to 2 a.m.
In any case, you can find strippers, rock, jazz and dance music at almost any level of quality. Once I decided on impulse that I wanted to get out for an hour or so and strolled across the street from my little apartment to a fairly small hotel. There, in its sizable bar, I found blues-jazz pianist and singer Mose Allison working with a very good trio. The town being Vancouver, I wasn`t much surprised.
If you go to Vancouver, it is only logical to take a day trip or an overnighter to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, on the tip of Vancouver Island.
Victoria is a charming city, in the vein of English country towns. Tea at the giant old Empress Hotel is worth the trip, but the town also has a superb provincial museum, the Capitol, a nice little maritime museum and many shops stocked with such goodies as Irish crystal and Scottish woolens, and plenty of good restaurants.