Vancouver for two days - would you go to Victoria?

[Debate]

In Vancouver for two days prior to an Alaskan cruise this Summer.  Traveling with my 75 year old mom and my teenage daughter. Should we take a day trip to Victoria on our 1 full day?? We like old architecture and gardens.  What should we see in Vancouver?  We will have a 1/2 day the day we arrive and then 1/2 day on cruise departure day as well as another 1/2 day when we return.   Also, any suggestions for hotels that are in a easy walking area to restaurants and maybe shopping at a public market?  We will not have a car.  

[cruiseryyc]

Getting to Victoria for only one day is not worth it.  There is plenty to see in Vancouver to keep you happy.  Just wandering Stanley Park will keep you busy all day.

 

[Heidi13]

On 2/14/2024 at 8:01 AM, Debate said:

In Vancouver for two days prior to an Alaskan cruise this Summer.  Traveling with my 75 year old mom and my teenage daughter. Should we take a day trip to Victoria on our 1 full day?? We like old architecture and gardens.  What should we see in Vancouver?  We will have a 1/2 day the day we arrive and then 1/2 day on cruise departure day as well as another 1/2 day when we return.   Also, any suggestions for hotels that are in a easy walking area to restaurants and maybe shopping at a public market?  We will not have a car.  

 

Tough Question to answer, without knowing more of your interests. However, one point to consider since you are travelling with a 75 yrs old. After, I assume, flights into Vancouver, do you want another pre-cruise travel day. You can fly harbour to harbour in an hour, but the ferry is at least 4 hrs each way.

 

Gardens - while Victoria has the renowned Butchart Gardens, both Vancouver and Victoria have a number of gardens to visit. Some of them are:

 - Victoria: Government House, Abkhazi Gardens

 - Vancouver: Stanley Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, Vandusen Gardens

 

Architecture - personally since both cities date from about the same era, I don't find significant differences. Both cities were only founded about 140 years ago, so whether you consider that as being old depends on your experiences.

 

Vancouver has good public transport and is a very walkable city. For a public market you can visit Granville Island, which is best accessed by the small ferries plying the waters of False Creek. Vancouver has many other attractions and in North Vancouver you have Capilano Suspension Bridge and Grouse Mountain.

 

Downtown Vancouver hotels, especially during cruise season are extremely expensive. The cheapest option is the YMCA Hotel, which is close to Stadium Skytrain Station. Cheaper hotels are available out in Richmond.

 

@martincath tagging our resident Vancouver expert, who can expand on the options. 

 

 

[martincath]

On 2/14/2024 at 8:01 AM, Debate said:

...Should we take a day trip to Victoria on our 1 full day?? ...   Also, any suggestions for hotels that are in a easy walking area to restaurants and maybe shopping at a public market? ...

First bit's easy - absolutely not. Even if you have money to throw at the logistics and fly both ways it's an awfully long day, and basically you'd need to be on your feet almost all the time. I speak from experience on this - our first visit as tourists we were here for a full week, spent a day apiece in Vic and Whistler, and in hindsight regretted both despite enjoying all the stuff we did in Victoria (Butchart, whalewatching, Royal BC Museum all took about 3 hours each and we also squeezed in quicker visits to Craigdarroch, Miniature World, and an art gallery whose name escapes me at the moment for approx. 12 hours plus the short but very scenic flights). Next day we needed a lie-in and abandoned our original plans of hitting UBC campus so we could actually relax! If you were thinking of one of the cheaper, but still pricey, coach-and-ferry trips to the Island (same total time as we spent, but an extra 3 hours traveling to and from so much less time actually Doing Things) then you will find that even if their schedule works perfectly you probably won't have enough time at Butchart to really enjoy it, and if there's traffic or a ferry delay it will be further compromised... I always recommend spending at least one night on the Island if you visit at all.

 

On the hotel front, there's no badly-located downtown hotel for restos, shopping, or sightseeing in Vancouver - and you'll probably be out and about the whole time, so paying for a view or fancy facilities doesn't seem like great value. We stayed at the YWCA Hotel ourselves as tourists, it was excellent then, it's had a reno and a whole new tower wing added since and continues to be among the best-reviewed hotels at any price despite being almost always cheaper than any suburban option. Granville Island hotel, or across the water in North Van the Lonsdale Quay Hotel, are both located basically right next to the public markets - but personally I'd look at a proper downtown core location for minimal time wasted traveling on a short visit!

 

The Y also has the most flexible room options - if none of you want to share a bed, they are unique in offering 'Jack & Jill' paired rooms sharing one bathroom (with a Queen or 2-beds on each side) for even less spend than 2 regular en suites, plus Family Rooms with 5 single beds which sometimes cost less than a pair of rooms. There are even single rooms - which ordinarily all use a shared hallway bathroom, but if you also have a twin room the solo could use that bathroom! No dorms - the 5pax family rooms are as big as it gets - but there are proper laundry and kitchen facilities to save a few more bucks making brekkies, packed lunches, even dinners if you want.

 

What to do? Unless you're from an even younger city, 'old' doesn't describe much of our architecture fairly in Van or Vic! We do have quite a bit of nice early interwar and some quirky more modern stuff around, and Gastown while might have had a lot of modern retro-twee-additions with the cobbles, lamps, and steam clock all being 70s installed just styled like Ye Olde Districte but it does have our highest concentration of Victorian/Edwardian buildings... your first contact on architecture should be with AIBC, who I just heard back from myself this week about their walking tours restarting this summer (unfortunately no specifics yet, but if you reach out they will also add you to list of folks who will be first to know when routes and dates are announced!). But even the free* ('tip what you want') walking tour from Toonie Tours covers the basics of our most iconic downtown core buildings, and while exactly what info you get depends on the guide they always follow basically the same route including Gastown and visit the Marine Building (one of our most interesting interiors and exteriors). There's also some useful info on the local Heritage Foundation website, like a map overlay app that flags where many and varied sites are - the actual tours these folks arrange tend to be more of a 'visit bunch of peoples houses so they can show off how nicely they have renovated the place' but they've also done some involving larger residential buildings and even some commercial sites, you might get lucky and find something that works for your dates.

 

There's also the free private custom tour option with Stroll Buddy (full disclosure: I am a local Buddy, but since it's a completely free, No Tip service, I don't feel any conflict of interest mentioning them!) which, if you're not familiar with the 'Greeter' concept can be summarized as 'imagine you have a friend who lives in City X, who connects you to a friend of theirs you don't already know to show you around town Like A Local' - who is available on your exact dates is a random factor, but if it's one of us who also likes architecture and gardens, like me, you may end up having a near-perfect-for-you tour without spending a dime on the guide!

 

Vancouver-proper gardens I'd advise Queen Elizabeth Park and Van Dusen (easy to walk between these) for a lovely mix of Old School Botanic (VD even has a hedge maze!) and a Butchart-Lite taster (QEP has 2 Quarry Gardens and the bigger one captures some of the same vibe, plus a waterfall if they ever fix the water recycling issues) with the bonus of an indoor Tropical garden under a glass dome. Less than US$30pp to visit both of these, including cost of a transit daypass! The other site you absolutely cannot miss given your preferred things to do is the Dr Sun Yat-Sen garden in Chinatown - unless you visit Suzhou in China you will never see a better example of an authentic Scholar's Garden anywhere in the world, and this is the single finest garden style around when it comes to harmoniously melding architecture and 'managed nature' as every building, every plant, every rock, even the pond and the surfaces you walk on are specifically chosen. Free docent-led guided tours run pretty much hourly in summer.

 

UBC Campus - technically not part of the city - also offers a bunch of interesting architecture (movie and TV location shoots love the local campuses due to how wildly different some of the buildings are) even if none of it is old, the world-class MOA (reopens in June) as well as several other museums, a small but beautifully located Rose Garden, and a better-than-Butchart Japanese Garden as part of their extensive Botanic garden, which even has proper tea ceremonies if your timing works out. There's even an elevated treewalk out at UBC and a working farm - and in summer the buses and campus sidewalks are a lot less busy due to far fewer students.

 

The only other thing I'll add right now is a potential caveat - it sounds like this is likely a 'girls trip' for 3 generations of the ladies in the family, and your profile doesn't indicate your normal home or gender, so if you yourself @Debate are a big, burly streetwise guy or the whole family lives somewhere urban and gritty feel free to ignore the rest of this paragraph! But just in case you are indeed a trio of females, perhaps from a nice suburb or small town, be aware that many of the most interesting and historic parts of Vancouver are in or adjacent to the poorest urban area in North America and there's a lot of potentially-uncomfortable, even scary, things to be seen... we are however an extremely safe city with crime stats against people lower than most 'nice' US college towns! If you had a car or rented an apartment anywhere near Gastown I'd be warning you about our pretty high property theft rates, but going car free and staying in any real hotel those won't be relevant - just apply normal, sensible behaviours like you should in any urban area on the planet and keep bags, phones etc. secure and you should be fine.

 

Thanks for tagging me in Andy @Heidi13 - I'm trying to check CC at least every few days now that we're getting closer to cruise season, but something that pops up in my inbox guarantees a prompter response!

[Debate]

Thank you so much for these incredible responses!  They are so helpful and I so much appreciate the time taken and depth of your responses!  We are, in fact, 3 generations of ladies .  My daughter and I live in Atlanta, GA so we are very familiar with crime, shady areas and being aware of our surroundings.  The day trip to Victoria I was considering was a day trip by mini coach.  After considering I think you are right to advise we skip Victoria on this trip.  I welcome any and all tips and advice you are willing to share on 2 days in Vancouver!!! 

[Milhouse]

Are you able to share the dates you are in town?  There are many festivals and events around town throughout the summer.

[Debate]

The cruise we are looking at is 7/28-8/4.  I’m thinking we’d arrive in Vancouver on 7/26.  

[martincath]

3 hours ago, Debate said:

Thank you so much for these incredible responses!  ...  After considering I think you are right to advise we skip Victoria on this trip.  I welcome any and all tips and advice you are willing to share on 2 days in Vancouver!!! 

You're welcome, and I'm happy to help with further info - but the more specific the request, the more likely I can be accurate with a response. In general, a short stay like this I always offer the same advice - get each of the party members to have a look at Tripadvisor and make their own shortlist of things they want to see, compare lists, decide if you're willing to split up the group, and then us local types can be of most help with things like how to combine X, Y, Z sites most efficiently.  All the big hit attractions have hundreds or even thousands of reviews, so their relative enjoyment levels for Joe Q Public is a pretty fair comparison - simply reading the Top 10 sites and tours may be all that you need to do to fill your entire time with stuff you have the best possible chance of enjoying.

 

Even without dataplans we have a free city-provided WiFi network that covers a lot of Vancouver (broadcasts as #VanWiFi), Translink manage to get passable signals even on trains in tunnels and moving buses, so it's pretty easy to use maps on phones or tablets and use messenger apps to stay in touch for free - so if one of you really wants to do a thing the others don't, you can easily coordinate meeting afterward without always having to go back to the hotel to meet up!

 

Another local logistical tidbit is that if everyone can ride a bike, even if you're not used to riding in traffic and want to avoid that, things like the Seawall are made vastly more efficient - depending on hotel choice, it might be ten miles to do the full loop and back and you can see exactly the same stuff at least three times faster on wheels. Adult tricycle rentals remove balance issues, and a tandem could let Granny do less pedaling with younger legs providing most of the power, but these days eBikes are easy to find too - spending a few bucks to save a few hours is generally wise when your time is short!

 

The other suggestion I'll make now is that for next time, have a look at flying Open Jaw into YYJ and out of YVR or even SEA - or the reverse depending on schedules. Not many nonstop flights from Atlanta area, but a ton of connections in Seattle, mean that you may be pleasantly surprised how little extra it costs to get onto the Island at the start or end of your cruise... and many folks enjoy the Clipper, which conveniently goes from downtown Vic to downtown Seattle on a 'Fast Cat' with border clearance done at the pier in Vic!

 

For this trip though, you're here for the final night of the Celebration of Light which is hugely popular - one of the biggest & best fireworks shows in the world - so I would strongly advise getting your hotel booked yesterday as the already-busy summer weekend nights will be compounded by not-actually-local 'locals' who don't want to commute home late at night after the show with hundreds of thousands of other people and thus book a hotel in the city that Saturday!