mytravelbugbite

On our second day in Vancouver we were again blessed with decent weather so to make the most of it (as the forecast for the rest of the week was poor) we chose to utilise the free bike hire offered by our hotel the Fairmont Waterfront. Point to note: we had enquired about this the day before but as the bikes were first come first served and we had let ourselves have a semi-lie-in we were too late. There is a 3 hour limit on the hire though so either early morning or afternoon should have been fine. We decided upon early morning and managed to secure ourselves a bike each which was great.

The Fairmont Waterfront is located alongside Canada Place so a natural progression from here was to head along the coastline towards Stanley Park. The bike route around the park along the sea wall is one-way (thankfully in our direction) so we continued on this track the full way around the edge. There are a few points along the way where you are required to dismount and push, but only for a few metres, and there are plenty of places to stop and view scenery or places of interest. In our case we didn’t stop too often once we were into the swing of things. One exception was to get a good view up to the Lions Gate Bridge. Other than that we kept moving forwards.

Many people do the route around Stanley Park and then head back but we continued along the rest of the sea wall which made its way around False Creek past many of the landmarks we had seen the previous day on the aquabus meaning this is another way to do yesterday’s itinerary without having to get on a boat. Personally I enjoyed doing both.

Past Granville Island we headed out towards Kitsilano which has arguably one of the best views of Vancouver. The skyscrapers are topped by mountains and framed at the bottom by the ocean. On a nice day this is worth getting to whether on a bike or not.

After taking 100s of photos we took a quicker route back to the hotel as our 3 hours was running out and following a quick pit stop we went out to explore a bit more of Vancouver but not before a bite to eat in Mink Chocolate although the less said about that probably the better. The food was ok but the manager was just rude and completely tarnished our experience and means I would not recommend.

A very short walk brought us to Gastown where there are many food venues and boutique shops but also a still functioning steam clock. We then gradually moved towards Robson Street to wander around some of the shops and we found somewhere to celebrate Pancake Day (yes I realise that shows how out of date my posts are- I’ve been busy)! The waiters in the store didn’t have a clue what we were on about because what we call pancakes in Britain are crepes in Canada but once we had worked it all out they were delicious and topped off a great day.

Have you cycled or roller-bladed the sea wall? Did you go the whole way round or just do a section of it?