would like help planning 2 days in Vancouver

[reeinaz]

Hi.

I will be in Vancouver pre-cruise, arriving 11AM 6/22 and my cruise departs 6/24. I'm staying at the St Regis hotel. I would love some assistance from those familiar with Vancouver to help me plan my stay since I have never been there before. I'm fine using public transportation, I don't drive, and I would likely need a tricycle if I chose to bike since I haven't been on one in maybe 20 years! I've read threads and visited Trip Advisor for ideas.

So far I have these:

Granville Public Market

Stanley Park Sea Wall

Sun Yat-Sen Garden

UBC Botanical Garden - not sure how out of the way this is.

Experience indigenous art and food

Localvore food (will likely make a reservation at Burdock and Co if there are no other suggestions)

New Town Bakery for fried apple pie

Peaceful hand pulled noodles (or similar. the hand pulled noodle idea grabbed my attention)

 

I guess I need help figuring out the logistics of getting to these places in a way that makes sense. I'm also open to more suggestions. I like my days to be fairly low key and easy going, so I don't need to do a ton of stuff, but I do want to feel like I actually visited Vancouver. 

 

Thanks so much in advance!

 

Cheree

 

 

 

[screwsmcernst]

We sailed out of Vancouver 2 yrs ago.  It is a beautiful city.  We were there 3 days prior to sailing.  Stanley park is beautiful.  We biked around the park.  there are also walking lanes next to the biking lanes so you won't have to worry about getting out of the way of bikers.  

 

If you like nature, you may like the Capilano Suspension Bridge.  it is about 15 mins. away from the St. Regis by car.  

 

Grandville Island is a lot of fun.  If you are going to a bakery for fried apple pie, you should also try a Nanaimo Bar.  They are a wonderful treat.  

 

If you want to see something unique, take a walk down to Gastown at the top of the hour to see   The Gastown Steam clock.  

 

We stayed at the Auberge hotel, and around the block from the hotel is an English pub called the Lion Pub.  We had drinks and snacks there a few times.  It was really fun. We also went to Black & Blue steakhouse and ate on their rooftop.  It was pricey, but the steaks and view were really good. I hope you have a great time discovering Vancouver and have a wonderful cruise.  😃

[martincath]

59 minutes ago, reeinaz said:

Hi.

I will be in Vancouver pre-cruise, arriving 11AM 6/22 and my cruise departs 6/24. I'm staying at the St Regis hotel ...

General logistics - transit is definitely going to be useful, but don't bother with Translinks own app as they now use Google to drive it so it's far better to simply load Google Maps and get ALL the options in one place for walking, transit, bike, and car (to compare speed of Taxi/Uber routing since you won't be driving yourself). Make use of Streetview to 'walk' a route in advance, see the landmarks as you will see them in person - we have had several visits by the google camera car, as well as bike and even 'guy walking with a rididculously big multicamera backpack' so some of the park trails and definitely the Seawall have recorded snaps. For almost all of your locations, buses are the only real transit option - while not as good as SkyTrain as they still have to fight traffic, there are plenty of bus lanes and you can get a decent idea of actual times simply by adjusting the Gmap settings ('Depart At' your specific date and potential time to see how normal traffic patterns impact drive time).

 

The two best 'tourist buses' are the 50 and 19 - the former will get you up to Queen Lizzie Park as well as Granville Island and various parts in between, and the latter runs from literally inside Stanley Park through downtown, Chinatown, and out along Kingsway (get off at the first stop after this turn and you'll be very close to Burdock) for access to some much less touristy pockets of good local dining. It even goes all the way out to Burnaby, in case you wanted to check out Metrotown or Crystal Mall (although SkyTrain is definitely quicker to these!)

 

Also a very handy hint for your travel - whatever you do, no matter how long your travel day has been on the 22nd, stay awake until 9pm local time! The 3 hour time diff from EST is actually pretty easy to overcome if you eat an extra meal at normal PST dinner time and stay up until at least 9 - ideally get outside, watch the sunset (around 9:30pm when you visit!) and only go to bed after that.

 

Locavore Western food - honestly, I'd send you to Burdock myself if you have the budget for it! Andrea is almost criminally unknown, she's not just an excellent chef but one of the hardest-working in the city (she's not one of those a**holes like Gordon Ramsey who owns a ton of places but rarely shows up to cook, often she's running the kitchen in Harvest during the day then up at Burdock for dinner service, even helps in Gobo when staff need vaycay), and the entire concept of the resto is seasonality (except for the fried chicken - that's on all year round, or regulars would burn the place to the ground...)

 

Sun Yat-Sen garden - just walk over, hit up New Town for your pie then maybe come back to the free park side to eat it in the gazebo (the proper garden doesn't like food and drink being consumed within except in their tea room), compare and contrast the less authentic side!

 

Hand-pulled noodles are also available elsewhere (we are a very, very noodley town!) but Peaceful also ticks off a hard-to-find Chinese cuisine box in it's Xi'an food influenced by Uighur and middle eastern flavours. Logistically, now that the downtown branches closed, Broadway is the only practical one to visit (SkyTrain to Broadway-City Hall) from downtown, or Kitsilano (any bus along 4th Avenue) if you are out at UBC. Personally I'd order the (smaller) cumin-lamb-on-noodles as opposed to the full portion versions of both individually, and then depending on your appetite you might also manage to fit in a Beef Roll!

 

Granville Island (not just the market - it's an interesting place, and most of the good craft shops are elsewhere - but for picnic foods, lunch, a great option) you can do by bus most cheaply (the 50 runs around several touristy parts of town) but the wee water taxis are worth the convenience if you are already on the Seawall anywhere near their routes (e.g. Yaletown, English Bay, Athletes Village).

 

Indigenous Art - if it's for purchase, then the gallery on the ground floor of Skwachays Lodge should be your first stop. Just to look at, also worth visiting here as lots on display, and their current artist-in-residence might be working in the studio to meet. There are other galleries, especially along Water St, but this is the only entirely indigenous-owned one. If it's all about seeing rather than buying, MOA will hopefully be open again by your visit - there's an insane number of rooms, packed with all sorts of artefacts from all over the world, but just sticking to local peoples you can still easily fill an hour or more looking without even doing any of the voice recordings or films (and if you are really interested, the firsthand accounts in the audio and video library are where all of the 'normal folks' data lives, rather than work by artists).

 

UBC just for the botanic garden probably isn't a good use of time - it's a bit of a schlep by transit, only buses, absolute minimum an hour from downtown and more likely 75+mins each way even if you take an Express bus to reduce the number of stops. If you're going to do MOA, the Japanese garden, Beaty Museum, etc. then UBC campus is well worth a lot of hours - but if your only interest is the botanic I'd honestly consider Capilano for your Treewalk instead because you also get the bridge itself, the cliffside glass floor walk, and a conveniently-packaged shuttle from downtown; and if you didn't want to do a Treewalk then frankly Stanley Park already has a crapton of trees, Queen Elizabeth another arboretum plus quarry gardens and the best views of Vancouver from inside the city, Van Dusen a better botanic garden (with an actual hedge maze), and only VD even costs anything of this trio!

 

Indigenous Food - realistically you have the choice of either a frankly not-super-interesting food truck Bannock (toppings tend to be very similiar to Beavertail/Elephant Ears for the fried ones, very sugary, or else split and filled with occasionaly something savoury like chili if a traditional baked style) or else a sit-down dinner at Salmon & Bannock. The latter is 100% my recommendation, you'll get some first-hand info from the staff as well as a selection of food that leans heavily toward game meat and fish - not just salmon, the best dishes here IMO are the seasonal fish like oolichan (smelt; by June no fresh ones, but the most interesting preparations are the preserved ones anyway, either smoked like kippers or pressed for their grease which is used like Italians do olive oil, dipping your bannock in) and herring roe (fresh has already been and gone, and that's how I like it best, but again you can have the eggs preserved in brine). A dinner here one of your nights and Burdock the other is definitely a great way to dine for traditional and modern locavore food!

 

The Seawall - without a bike it's a big time commitment unless you're in good enough shape to run it rather than walk. In theory it's also one-way around the park even for pedestrians - and once you are on it there are very few opportunities to leave it, no real shortcuts around the western end. If you can budget for 5 miles of walking time plus photostops, it's definitely a nice experience though! Adult trikes are still available from at least JV rentals, but with eBikes dominating the rental market most places only offer two wheelers - personally I'd say that riding a bike is, well, proverbially like itself in that the skill once learned really does not ever disappear 😉

 

eBikes also have better stability thanks to the weight of the batteries - any chance you have a friend you could borrow a bike from just to make sure you're happy riding? Failing that, Search here and you'll find some recent posts with suggested routes - but long story short if you just walk the first bit to the Totem Poles and lighthouse, then cut back through the middle via Lumberman's Arch you can see the harbour and cruise dock looking back toward the city and the views from English Bay give you a westward ocean, sunsets, big queue of ships waiting for their slot in the industrial port that's not far off what you'd see on out outside of the park (exception, Siwash Rock, this is really only visible from a short bit of Park Drive above and the Seawall itself).

 

In combination with a short walk of the eastern parts, a fairly quick taxi/uberlyft trip that you pay wait time for would let you hit Prospect Point for views over the top of Lions Gate bridge, then another at the viewing point for Siwash, perhaps another at the Hollow Tree, in a single loop around the roadway - maybe $50 depending how long you spend taking pics which isn't bad compared to multiple-hour eBike rental or the carriage ride!

 

Other Things Not Mentioned By You Already - MOA I noted already; since you're already considering a visit to Mount Pleasant for Burdock it's an interesting 'hood in its own right. The oldest Vancouver suburb, Muralfest has packed tons of building walls with art, the return of 'Brewery Creek', the juxtaposition of shiny new mid- and high-rise buildings with heritage homes and even a native longhouse, light industrial businesses, artist studios, bakeries and restos  just yards apart, virtually no chain stores, and right nextdoor on the bottom of the hill is the newest downtown 'hood of the Athletes Village. My most popular 'off the beaten track' half-day walking tour is basically to hit up this neck of the woods for all these reasons, then leave folks at the water taxi pier so they can get to Granville Island.

 

Speaking of - as a solo traveler I would strongly recommend trying to book a free walk with Stroll Buddies here so you have a local to show you around. There aren't many of us Buddies, but since your dates are on a weekend there's a better chance of the ones who still work being available! For a grounding in the more tourist-friendly downtown area, the Toonie Tours freebie covers the bases well (big groups of up to 30, but multiple departures daily in summer, and while these guys do expect a tip it's still a low-cost option to get some entertaining tales of yore). If architecture is of interest, I can't praise AIBCs walks enough but they may not be running yet - but you can send them an email to get on the distro list of when they will begin this summer.

 

There's a lot more stuff to potentially add, but given your limited time and what you've already flagged as things you are interested in I won't throw out any further ideas unless you specifically ask! It's already shaping up to be a potentially long day on the 23rd for you, even if you sensibly delay some walkable downtown stuff to embarkation morning.

[reeinaz]

Thanks so much. This was definitely helpful. One of the reasons I enjoy cruising so much is that I don’t have to do any of this planning. Most times I just stay in my hotel and order room service pre cruise LOL. But I don’t know how often I will get to visit Vancouver. 

[martincath]

4 hours ago, reeinaz said:

Thanks so much. This was definitely helpful. One of the reasons I enjoy cruising so much is that I don’t have to do any of this planning. Most times I just stay in my hotel and order room service pre cruise LOL. But I don’t know how often I will get to visit Vancouver. 

No worries - well, except having added more stuff to your shortlist, expanded other areas, and not really told you not to go anywhere you were thinking about doing!!! So sorry for that - but if you do firm up a 'definitely X, Y, Z' and want further 'do this first evening, embarkation morning, possibly a better time on your full middle day' logistical help just ask away. As an example - if you do wake up early, that's a great time to visit New Town as they open at 6:30am and some of the popular pastries sell out by lunchtime! Not a great time to connect it with anything ticketed unfortunately, almost nothing opens before 9am because everyone wants to be up a mountain doing yoga before work... at least, based on most Insta feeds in these parts! 😉

[GORDONCHICK]

We used the HOHO bus for 2 days and it was great for getting us all around the city.  it helped us cover a lot of ground in a shorter amount of time.  Stanley Park is beautiful, and we loved the aquarium.  We went to so many places and saw so much in 2 days.

[notbroken]

I had an unpleasant experience at Salmon and Bannock despite the food being just okay. After ordering drinks, an appetizer, and our main dishes, one of my friends chose to have a simple dinner salad. Unfortunately, this led to the owner insulting them publicly. The owner’s rude and disrespectful behavior continued throughout our visit, leaving a negative impression on the entire group. The lack of basic courtesy and professionalism significantly overshadowed any redeeming qualities of the food.

[ATSEAMYLIFE]

A hidden gem if you're interested in true crime is the Vancouver Police Museum.  https://www.vancouverpolicemuseum.ca/  

[martincath]

12 hours ago, notbroken said:

I had an unpleasant experience at Salmon and Bannock

If you have not left out any relevant information, if the interaction went as you say above, whoever served you should not be in their job long. Personally I'd have escalated it at the time rather than complain after the fact - and unless it was resolved right away I'd have walked out without dining - but at the very least I assume you're putting this info on Yelp, Tripadvisor etc. where more folks will see it and the resto will have a chance to respond? Given every server introduces themselves by name and indigenous group affiliation(s) at S&B, it should be trivially easy to ensure that you report the right person so they can get the training they obviously need, or find some new employment better-suited to their temperament...

 

Weirdly enough, I had a bad experience there last month myself but in extremely different circumstances: we had a new server who managed to fluff putting the order in to the kitchen both at all (our food was delayed significantly until she realised she hadn't actually placed the order), and also managed to get a dish wrong (elk ordered, bison brought to table) which resulted in a further delay resolving. However, we felt the offered compensation to be good enough to resolve the issue right away - we were brought complimentary candied salmon to tide us over until our ordered appies came, and when the wrong dish came to light she offered, without prompting, to comp our booze for the mistake (the most expensive element of our meal) as well as redoing my sablefish from scratch so we could both eat together once my wife's elk steak was cooked.

 

I feel this illustrates pretty well that even new staff, not part of the family, from a couple of thousand miles away in Manitoba (Métis) feel empowered there, compared to far too many restos where comping anything requires going up the chain - and also that good customer service is taken quite seriously at S&B, even if they're never going to be winning a Michelin star as the style of service will never be polished enough.

 

Reference to the resto as 'ours' or even 'mine' is also very normal there... I've heard it from virtually all the staff, few of whom are family these days, it's usually part of their opening spiel to say 'welcome to our restaurant, on the tradtional unceded lands...' and make reference to 'our specials' etc., etc. Given that Inez cooks, even if she was working herself the night you visited she would not have been taking orders - I've seen her roust kids from doing their homework to take my order back in the day so she could stay in the kitchen!

 

The overall vibe remains more Family Diner than Fancy Resto, despite experimenting with a host/sommelier to gussy things up in the evenings - not 'edgy' like the Elbow Room was back in the day, with deliberately insulting servers, but the kind of place where if you interact with the servers more than simply asking for what you want you may get some banter going back & forth, and sometimes a joke just doesn't land right.

 

My wife also rarely orders an entree, almost never at S&B because they're a good size - the only reason she did so this most recent visit is that Elk is her absolute favourite meat. She most often orders the sausage appie as her main course. I say this because that dish is $2 less than the dinner salad on the list of entrees at S&B, so I have personal experience of someone at my table ordering even less for their entree than the poster above does, and it's never been commented on how little she orders - although my own over-ordering has certainly generated commentary!

 

That dinner salad is a core menu item, and a very common order with a big chunk of the local demographic - we are the skinniest city in Canada - so insulting someone ordering that would be a great way to get your resto cancelled by an army of the Influenced as the 'skinny b*tches' of Vancouver's Insta crowd united to take 'em down!

 

I've been visiting at least annually for 13 years, from back when it was a much more casual mostly-family-run affair that was open from lunchtime, and I'd often drop in during the in-between hours to order a couple of nibbles. Unfortunately when I discovered I was diabetic ~10years ago my bannock consumption went *poof* so it dropped out of regular rotation and became a 'birthday treat' or similar, at most twice a year - so while I recognize Inez and a couple of other long-term staff, mostly it's new faces and I certainly don't get any special treatment as a regular, unlike some other spots where we get the full kissy cheeks and 'your usual table?' malarky!

 

I certainly won't be amending my continued recommendation of S&B based on this experience, as it flies in the face of everything I know about the place - the very definition of an outlier, even if there are no other factual errors than identifying the person concerned.

[notbroken]

My comments were intentionally vague but to add some details

My wife has a medical condition that significantly limits her diet, so we were aware that she would not be able to enjoy much of the menu at this restaurant. When ordering, she requested the dinner salad ($18) with the toppings on the side. During our meal, Inez, the owner, interacted with several customers, including us. Inez noticed that my wife had barely touched her salad and my wife mentioned there was nothing wrong with the food but that she was not able to eat it.  Inez remarked, “It’s too bad that you came to my restaurant and all you could order was a salad.” Even though the rest of the table had drinks, appetizer, and meals.  I asked for the check and when Inez brought it, she told my wife, “I hope you don’t starve on the cruise.”  Neither were said in a joking manner.  I paid the bill and told Inez that we were there supporting her and the restaurant and that she in return was rude and insulting.

Inez later responded via email, saying, “I am sorry if it came off insensitive.. sometimes I just act like a mama wanting to feed everyone .:  I thought it was allergies and didn’t realize it was a medical reason as well .. we always try our best to accommodate allergies ...”

To me that seems like a strange apology to everyone but those with allergies but whatever. 

 

Again, Inez initiated the comments and I only put this out there as my experience.

 

Martincath – I appreciate your comments and you were one of the reasons we tried the restaurant.

[martincath]

10 hours ago, notbroken said:

Martincath – I appreciate your comments and you were one of the reasons we tried the restaurant.

And I appreciate you clarifying the situation you experienced - from the clumsy email apology wording alone I do believe that was Inez, the whole PR/schmoozing side of the restaurant trade is definitely not her strength, she's a 'Cook by name, cook by nature' who pretty much stumbled into being successful because she makes great food rather than trying to build a restaurant empire, and feeding people really seems to be her raison d'etre.

 

Not to minimise your feelings at the time, but hopefully to to let you and your wife look back at this from a different perspective - I've been on the receiving end of that bone-dry delivery myself, and even though I run pretty dark and sarcastic myself I was a bit flummoxed the first time.

 

It was also the first time I was served smoked Oolichan - I had finished most of my portion but not yet the heads, and from behind me this voice piped up along the lines of "Is there something wrong with your Oolichan?" and turning I saw this lady in whites who I only later found out was Inez. My response was something like "No, I'm just saving the heads for last," (which I was; this was closest thing I'd had to a decent kipper in years so I was savouring every bite rather than just munching the fish whole - but anyone familiar with really small fish, like Whitebait, knows that just like Quint in Jaws you eat 'the whole damn thing' so I can definitely see that how I was handling my food looked as if I had no idea how I was supposed to eat it, knife-and-forking it in tiny portions instead of just gobbling them down in two or three bites).

 

"Well don't forget to eat the heads, they're the best part, we usually eat them first..." was approximately how the end of the conversation from her side went as she walked away - and I did raise an eyebrow toward my wife and whisper: "That was a bit weird - do you think she'd be genuinely offended if I didn't eat the heads?"

 

It would have been easy to take offence - "How dare she try to tell me how to eat my meal? Why not at least ask politely if we are enjoying our food instead of assuming there was an issue? Why does it even matter - she's getting paid whether or not I eat the dang fish heads at all let alone when?" would all be perfectly valid takes... but I'm glad that instead I gave her the benefit of the doubt, because it became apparent that this was someone who genuinely cared that her food made people happy, wants patrons to try possibly-weird-to-them food because it's delicious, and while her manner certainly isn't polished maybe provide a little education about local culture as well as food. We had another brief chat at the end of the meal - she did follow-up on the initial comment too by asking how the heads were now that I had finished and seemed genuinely happy I enjoyed them, and we shared a few tales of foraging and fishing for seasonal produce in childhood.

 

It's actually been several years since I've chatted with Inez though, because the resto has been so consistently busy I can't remember the last time I saw her glad-handing her way around the dining room - ironically if our visits had been reversed, you folks getting an error-prone new waitron and me getting dodgy banter from Inez, we'd both have had a better experience! It hadn't even crossed my mind to give any kind of warning about S&B in that sort of context, it's been so long since I adjusted my own expectations to fit local native cultural norms, so it's good that you posted your experience so others who might take things in similar fashion have more understanding. I should probably start popping a caveat onto my recco for S&B similar to what I do with Phnom Penh, whose service levels definitely come across as rather brusque to folks unfamiliar with such things.

 

Again, thanks for sharing - and I hope your cruiseline did a good job of catering to your wife's dietary restrictions without commentary!

[bbqoug]

My wife & I have reservations for dinner at Salmon n' Bannock next month before our cruise. We are very much looking forward to it & will go into it knowing that cultural differences may make it different than our normal restaurant experience.

[mwj]

On 4/15/2024 at 2:04 PM, martincath said:

General logistics - transit is definitely going to be useful, but don't bother with Translinks own app as they now use Google to drive it so it's far better to simply load Google Maps and get ALL the options in one place for walking, transit, bike, and car (to compare speed of Taxi/Uber routing since you won't be driving yourself). Make use of Streetview to 'walk' a route in advance, see the landmarks as you will see them in person - we have had several visits by the google camera car, as well as bike and even 'guy walking with a rididculously big multicamera backpack' so some of the park trails and definitely the Seawall have recorded snaps. For almost all of your locations, buses are the only real transit option - while not as good as SkyTrain as they still have to fight traffic, there are plenty of bus lanes and you can get a decent idea of actual times simply by adjusting the Gmap settings ('Depart At' your specific date and potential time to see how normal traffic patterns impact drive time).

 

The two best 'tourist buses' are the 50 and 19 - the former will get you up to Queen Lizzie Park as well as Granville Island and various parts in between, and the latter runs from literally inside Stanley Park through downtown, Chinatown, and out along Kingsway (get off at the first stop after this turn and you'll be very close to Burdock) for access to some much less touristy pockets of good local dining. It even goes all the way out to Burnaby, in case you wanted to check out Metrotown or Crystal Mall (although SkyTrain is definitely quicker to these!)

 

Also a very handy hint for your travel - whatever you do, no matter how long your travel day has been on the 22nd, stay awake until 9pm local time! The 3 hour time diff from EST is actually pretty easy to overcome if you eat an extra meal at normal PST dinner time and stay up until at least 9 - ideally get outside, watch the sunset (around 9:30pm when you visit!) and only go to bed after that.

 

Locavore Western food - honestly, I'd send you to Burdock myself if you have the budget for it! Andrea is almost criminally unknown, she's not just an excellent chef but one of the hardest-working in the city (she's not one of those a**holes like Gordon Ramsey who owns a ton of places but rarely shows up to cook, often she's running the kitchen in Harvest during the day then up at Burdock for dinner service, even helps in Gobo when staff need vaycay), and the entire concept of the resto is seasonality (except for the fried chicken - that's on all year round, or regulars would burn the place to the ground...)

 

Sun Yat-Sen garden - just walk over, hit up New Town for your pie then maybe come back to the free park side to eat it in the gazebo (the proper garden doesn't like food and drink being consumed within except in their tea room), compare and contrast the less authentic side!

 

Hand-pulled noodles are also available elsewhere (we are a very, very noodley town!) but Peaceful also ticks off a hard-to-find Chinese cuisine box in it's Xi'an food influenced by Uighur and middle eastern flavours. Logistically, now that the downtown branches closed, Broadway is the only practical one to visit (SkyTrain to Broadway-City Hall) from downtown, or Kitsilano (any bus along 4th Avenue) if you are out at UBC. Personally I'd order the (smaller) cumin-lamb-on-noodles as opposed to the full portion versions of both individually, and then depending on your appetite you might also manage to fit in a Beef Roll!

 

Granville Island (not just the market - it's an interesting place, and most of the good craft shops are elsewhere - but for picnic foods, lunch, a great option) you can do by bus most cheaply (the 50 runs around several touristy parts of town) but the wee water taxis are worth the convenience if you are already on the Seawall anywhere near their routes (e.g. Yaletown, English Bay, Athletes Village).

 

Indigenous Art - if it's for purchase, then the gallery on the ground floor of Skwachays Lodge should be your first stop. Just to look at, also worth visiting here as lots on display, and their current artist-in-residence might be working in the studio to meet. There are other galleries, especially along Water St, but this is the only entirely indigenous-owned one. If it's all about seeing rather than buying, MOA will hopefully be open again by your visit - there's an insane number of rooms, packed with all sorts of artefacts from all over the world, but just sticking to local peoples you can still easily fill an hour or more looking without even doing any of the voice recordings or films (and if you are really interested, the firsthand accounts in the audio and video library are where all of the 'normal folks' data lives, rather than work by artists).

 

UBC just for the botanic garden probably isn't a good use of time - it's a bit of a schlep by transit, only buses, absolute minimum an hour from downtown and more likely 75+mins each way even if you take an Express bus to reduce the number of stops. If you're going to do MOA, the Japanese garden, Beaty Museum, etc. then UBC campus is well worth a lot of hours - but if your only interest is the botanic I'd honestly consider Capilano for your Treewalk instead because you also get the bridge itself, the cliffside glass floor walk, and a conveniently-packaged shuttle from downtown; and if you didn't want to do a Treewalk then frankly Stanley Park already has a crapton of trees, Queen Elizabeth another arboretum plus quarry gardens and the best views of Vancouver from inside the city, Van Dusen a better botanic garden (with an actual hedge maze), and only VD even costs anything of this trio!

 

Indigenous Food - realistically you have the choice of either a frankly not-super-interesting food truck Bannock (toppings tend to be very similiar to Beavertail/Elephant Ears for the fried ones, very sugary, or else split and filled with occasionaly something savoury like chili if a traditional baked style) or else a sit-down dinner at Salmon & Bannock. The latter is 100% my recommendation, you'll get some first-hand info from the staff as well as a selection of food that leans heavily toward game meat and fish - not just salmon, the best dishes here IMO are the seasonal fish like oolichan (smelt; by June no fresh ones, but the most interesting preparations are the preserved ones anyway, either smoked like kippers or pressed for their grease which is used like Italians do olive oil, dipping your bannock in) and herring roe (fresh has already been and gone, and that's how I like it best, but again you can have the eggs preserved in brine). A dinner here one of your nights and Burdock the other is definitely a great way to dine for traditional and modern locavore food!

 

The Seawall - without a bike it's a big time commitment unless you're in good enough shape to run it rather than walk. In theory it's also one-way around the park even for pedestrians - and once you are on it there are very few opportunities to leave it, no real shortcuts around the western end. If you can budget for 5 miles of walking time plus photostops, it's definitely a nice experience though! Adult trikes are still available from at least JV rentals, but with eBikes dominating the rental market most places only offer two wheelers - personally I'd say that riding a bike is, well, proverbially like itself in that the skill once learned really does not ever disappear 😉

 

eBikes also have better stability thanks to the weight of the batteries - any chance you have a friend you could borrow a bike from just to make sure you're happy riding? Failing that, Search here and you'll find some recent posts with suggested routes - but long story short if you just walk the first bit to the Totem Poles and lighthouse, then cut back through the middle via Lumberman's Arch you can see the harbour and cruise dock looking back toward the city and the views from English Bay give you a westward ocean, sunsets, big queue of ships waiting for their slot in the industrial port that's not far off what you'd see on out outside of the park (exception, Siwash Rock, this is really only visible from a short bit of Park Drive above and the Seawall itself).

 

In combination with a short walk of the eastern parts, a fairly quick taxi/uberlyft trip that you pay wait time for would let you hit Prospect Point for views over the top of Lions Gate bridge, then another at the viewing point for Siwash, perhaps another at the Hollow Tree, in a single loop around the roadway - maybe $50 depending how long you spend taking pics which isn't bad compared to multiple-hour eBike rental or the carriage ride!

 

Other Things Not Mentioned By You Already - MOA I noted already; since you're already considering a visit to Mount Pleasant for Burdock it's an interesting 'hood in its own right. The oldest Vancouver suburb, Muralfest has packed tons of building walls with art, the return of 'Brewery Creek', the juxtaposition of shiny new mid- and high-rise buildings with heritage homes and even a native longhouse, light industrial businesses, artist studios, bakeries and restos  just yards apart, virtually no chain stores, and right nextdoor on the bottom of the hill is the newest downtown 'hood of the Athletes Village. My most popular 'off the beaten track' half-day walking tour is basically to hit up this neck of the woods for all these reasons, then leave folks at the water taxi pier so they can get to Granville Island.

 

Speaking of - as a solo traveler I would strongly recommend trying to book a free walk with Stroll Buddies here so you have a local to show you around. There aren't many of us Buddies, but since your dates are on a weekend there's a better chance of the ones who still work being available! For a grounding in the more tourist-friendly downtown area, the Toonie Tours freebie covers the bases well (big groups of up to 30, but multiple departures daily in summer, and while these guys do expect a tip it's still a low-cost option to get some entertaining tales of yore). If architecture is of interest, I can't praise AIBCs walks enough but they may not be running yet - but you can send them an email to get on the distro list of when they will begin this summer.

 

There's a lot more stuff to potentially add, but given your limited time and what you've already flagged as things you are interested in I won't throw out any further ideas unless you specifically ask! It's already shaping up to be a potentially long day on the 23rd for you, even if you sensibly delay some walkable downtown stuff to embarkation morning.

much appreciated ... thank you !