Arriving on July1st Canada Day in Vancouver - how bad will it be?

[larrybritt]

We are arriving on July 1st in Vancouver at 6:30pm and from what I hear about celebrations we are pretty concerned about getting to hotel. We will have a long day of travel from Myrtle Beach South Carolina.. I come to find out it’s Canada day and we are staying at Pan Pacific at Canada Place. So what I hear is there will be a lot going on, we are thinking of taking the Sky Train from airport and hoping That will get us to the hotel best way possible. Any suggestions? Are we doing the right thing? We will be there until the 4th and i Hear we better make dinner reservations early as that is a busy weekend. 
 

Any good suggestions for dinner or even brunch on Sunday. We are Steak, Italian and seafood People. A little mobility concerns so closer to hotel the better. 

[Coquitlam Cruiser]

You are smart in taking the Canada Line (SkyTrain) from YVR to Waterfront Station.   Make use of the elevators to assist in getting to street level.  Canada Place will be busy will special family events.  However, as far as I know there are no fireworks as in 2022.  The Honda Celebration of Light is later in the month with different countries participating with their own fireworks extravaganza.  The International Jazz Festival is on as is Bard on the Beach.  There are many fine restaurants in the area.  Gothams is one of the premier steakhouses in Vancouver with prices to match.  It is an easy 10 minute walk from the hotel. Commercial Drive is the heart of the Italian district in Vancouver with restaurants.  But downtown restaurants like Glowbal are awesome.  Even the Pan Pacific is wonderful for dining.  Enjoy Vancouver. 

[martincath]

On 5/21/2023 at 3:27 PM, larrybritt said:

We are arriving on July 1st in Vancouver at 6:30pm and from what I hear about celebrations we are pretty concerned about getting to hotel. ...Any good suggestions for dinner or even brunch on Sunday. We are Steak, Italian and seafood People. A little mobility concerns so closer to hotel the better. 

With no fireworks announcement yet, it's looking less and less likely there will be any - in which case by the time you get downtown it'll be all be basically done with! The rest of the stuff is strictly Daytime, Family things - here's last years schedule where you can see that the last events were basically finishing by 5pm on all the stages.

 

If the fireworks (or the trendy new drone shows which are replacing such things these days) do happen, kickoff is obviously after dark - so probably around 10pm. Getting into your hotel won't be an issue for a cab regardless - and since they are fixed fares inbound, unless you have 2 or fewer people or a large group that doesn't divide into 3-4 per cab easily, it's a simple and not too expensive option although SkyTrain is going to be a bit quicker and a bit cheaper (though not THAT much, with inbound fares adding $5 per person, so ~$8pp on a weekend - four in a cab at $38 makes for $9.50 + tip...)

 

Food - yeah, even without fireworks enough of the bridge & tunnel 'locals' will drive in for the events then stay downtown to eat that it will be busier than a usual Saturday. Cabs to better value steak and seafood and definitely italian options will save a lot of money over only dining at the in-hotel or close-by restos, as well as being a bit less busy given the days activities being centered here the restos proper run fancy and pricey unless you step down to much more casual pub grub.  With possible delays for all sorts of reasons though, I would not make a reso Saturday evening until you actually get here - you can check on the likes of OpenTable for an available X-top near you once you are actually on your way in from the airport if you have free phone data... or if you do take SkyTrain, there's free WiFi from Translink that should work even in the tunnels!

 

Rogue (right inside Waterfront Station) and Steamworks (basically next door) are owned by the same folks, with very similar menus, and between the two of them you have a good chance of being able to lock in a table at fairly short notice. With your tums already thinking it's after 10pm I doubt you'll want a heavy meal on arrival, so a broad pub grubby menu should work to enable a reasonable selection.

 

Fancier food next day and onward, and definitely brunch Sunday as that remains peak queue time regardless of holiday or not, make resos! I'd book a Medina brunch ASAP - still the best in the city, less than a mile on foot, maybe $5 in a cab each way if mobility issues are acting up. Steak-wise, you'll find the price-points annoying here compared to the US for big lumps of cow - honestly, unless you have no decent steakhouse near home I would focus on what we do well that you cannot find easily or at all near home... except maybe Elisa, which does offer a genuinely different steakhouse experience with rather odd breeds and cuts (e.g. they offer meat from mature dairy cows past their peak milk yielding years - packed full of flavour but requires much more careful handling to get it tender than the typical barely-grown bullock that can be slaughtered and slapped right on a grill!)

 

Salmon'n'Bannock is definitely going to be a cab ride away, maybe $20, but Indigenous food is extremely hard to come by and for steak lovers, they always have at least a couple of cuts of Bison that should be familiar enough not to be worried about the food being too weird to enjoy; plus they have have Salmon right in the name so unsurprisingly their fish game is strong.

 

For Big Bucks seafood, Blue Water Cafe is all you need to know - about $10 cab fare to Yaletown, definitely needs a reso any weekend of the year, given the holiday I'd book at least a month in advance to get some choice of times. Whether it's big platters of chilled stuff, Sushi/Sashimi, or cooked this is the best overall 'stuff out of the water' resto in the city.

 

Since many classic Italian foods are actually Asian or South American fusion to begin with (no noodles or tomato sauce for the Romans!!!) trying somewhere like Phnom Penh might work well (beef luc lac is basically carpaccio with sauces, some of the best chicken wings on the planet and who doesn't eat those?) but if you want lasagne and the like, Cibo or Lupo are ~$10 cab rides away and offer decent portions of good food at fair prices; if money is no object you could go rub elbows with the Hollywood peeps in town filming movies in summer at CinCin (pretty serious steaks here too, a very fancy huge flaming wood grill, but not a cheap dinner!); in-between, dang good but a little more nouvelle cuisine in the portion size, Autostrada might be just about walkable to their Homer/Pender location or if multiple choices of delicious handmade pasta is your bag then Ask For Luigi is hard to beat (even without walking issues, neighbourhood is a bit sketchy around here so a cab, ~$10, would be recommended).

 

And if there's no objection to Asian food, then just about anything Japanese/Chinese/Korean we do at a high level at many pricepoints, from swanky dim sum with whole crabs murdered specially for you to Peking Duck and birdsnest soup we run the gamut of Chinese, all sorts of regional restos as well as various fusion options; we have a tiny Japanese population, but manage to offer a lot of restos - from casual Ramen joints to Sashimi that's partly cooked with flames Aburi style; and if anyone locally talks about KFC chances are they mean Korean Fried Chicken, not the Colonel! If volume is better than quality for you, Korean All You Can Eat places are generally a safer bet than AYCE sushi... Malaysian is also pretty good here with a few competing restos around, mostly outside the core but if you've never tried it Banana Leaf is a perfectly decent intro spot with two downtown branches.

[xlxo]

On 5/22/2023 at 6:05 PM, martincath said:

or the trendy new drone shows which are replacing such things these days

There will never likely be a drone show around Canada Place.  There was one sponsored by Best Buy 5 months ago and on performance night... nearby interference from Seabus radio operations prevented the show from starting.  https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/drone-show-canada-place-cancelled-again

[martincath]

1 hour ago, xlxo said:

There will never likely be a drone show around Canada Place.  There was one sponsored by Best Buy 5 months ago and on performance night... nearby interference from Seabus radio operations prevented the show from starting.  https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/drone-show-canada-place-cancelled-again

Now they're blaming Seabus? At the time, the reports I saw indicated it was too many people livestreaming on phones (which always struck me as highly unlikely; why would drones operate in the same band as cellphones given the entire point of these shows is as eco-friendly firework replacements, i.e. many people will always be using their phones in the watching crowds!!!)

 

I think we will see drones in Vancouver at some point in the not-too-distant future  - it's only a matter of time before fireworks are banned given how green the province runs; given that some very elaborate displays have been successfully deployed elsewhere it's just a matter of adjusting frequencies or perhaps even just putting them over English Bay like the Festival of Light instead of at Canada Place... NYE fireworks have already been bumped to the end of False Creek (although also cancelled again last year), so there are multiple locations to safely gather large crowds to watch the skies.

[xlxo]

Fyi.... Fireworks is permanently cancelled...

 

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/canada-day-vancouver-fireworks-cancelled-permanently