larry_s_taco Posted May 27 #1 Share Posted May 27 We are just starting to investigate visiting Vancouver. We have a cruise ending in Vancouver in May. We plan to stay several days to see the city. Is there an area in the city that is better to stay in if we want to spend most of our time walking to see the city? Are there any hotels that you could recommend that would allow our walking tours? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Milhouse Posted May 28 #2 Share Posted May 28 Off the top, I'd caution to be flexible due to weather/rain. This May has been a bit mixed with a number of rainy days. Staying somewhere downtown is kind of convenient as a lot of major tourist sights and attraction are concentrated in the downtown core and vicinity which I find very walkable. Downtown is also pretty convenient to take public transit or an uber to some of the interesting further out sights. However, the tradeoff is that downtown hotels are generally pretty expensive. And there are pockets here and there that are somewhat sketchy (tho not really dangerous). Location-wise, I'd probably want to stay at one of the big chains around the Coal Harbour area but they're expensive. One of the locals @martincath recommends the YWCA which a lot of cruisers seem to have enjoyed and is good value. I've read many cruisers having good stays at the Blue Horizon on Robson street too which a good location. If you are going to be ok exploring a lot on foot, you likely can be pretty flexible where you stay in the downtown core. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare martincath Posted May 28 #3 Share Posted May 28 ^+1: you wanna walk around, you wanna stay downtown! I assume this is May 2025 @larry_s_taco so you might have AIBCs architectural walks running again (supposed to restart this summer, just Jul/Aug in '24, but depending how popular an expanded timeline perhaps by next year), Toonie Tours 'free' tip-what-you-like walks seem even more popular than they were pre-Covid as they're now the only folks running freebies daily, and Stroll Buddy is always worth trying (actually free with no tips expected, entirely volunteer-driven so a crapshoot who's available on your dates but just your group on a customized tour is a hard to beat proposition) plus loads of Pay A Bunch small group walking and biking tours that are easily found on e.g. Tripadvisor. Thanks for the ping @Milhouse, I won't be around much for a while (idiot neighbour set fire to her unit, we're partly washed out thanks to the fire brigade - better than being burninated on a personal level but just as much hassle in terms of insurance claims, repairs, temporary apartment etc. etc.!) but those pop right up in my inbox so I'll answer such when I have a few minutes... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare Milhouse Posted May 29 #4 Share Posted May 29 On 5/27/2024 at 7:32 PM, martincath said: I won't be around much for a while (idiot neighbour set fire to her unit, we're partly washed out thanks to the fire brigade - better than being burninated on a personal level but just as much hassle in terms of insurance claims, repairs, temporary apartment etc. etc.!) Ouch, that sucks. Similar thing happened to my aunt and uncle many years back. Their neighbour was cooking something up and basically blew up their corner of the building. They were out of their unit for over a year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare martincath Posted May 29 #5 Share Posted May 29 17 hours ago, Milhouse said: Ouch, that sucks. Similar thing happened to my aunt and uncle many years back. Their neighbour was cooking something up and basically blew up their corner of the building. They were out of their unit for over a year. Yeesh - we've been about as lucky as we can be, with only a bit of the floor and adjoining wall to our master impacted, so we still have a clean bed and bathroom to use and provided nothing else unexpected happens we won't need to move ourselves and our stuff out (been there, done that, do not want to do it again!) But of course this is when my parents are coming to visit, so unless repairs get done ridiculously efficiently we'll be four people sharing a single bathroom - I grew up with even more people sharing one like many UK families, but Canadian housing standards of 'at least as many loos as bedrooms' have made me soft!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stevepcb64 Posted June 18 #6 Share Posted June 18 On 5/27/2024 at 5:47 PM, larry_s_taco said: We are just starting to investigate visiting Vancouver. We have a cruise ending in Vancouver in May. We plan to stay several days to see the city. Is there an area in the city that is better to stay in if we want to spend most of our time walking to see the city? Are there any hotels that you could recommend that would allow our walking tours? Thanks We just got back and I can tell you where not to stay and that is anywhere near the Quality Inn on Granville if it is the weekend. They close part of the street down and have a street party until the wee hours of the morning. If I had it to do again I would pay the extra money and stay in the Coal Harbour area for sure as recommended above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larry_s_taco Posted June 18 Author #7 Share Posted June 18 Thanks for the heads up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
larry_s_taco Posted July 1 Author #8 Share Posted July 1 How many days should I plan to explore what I can from the downtown area? I have no idea what is there to explore but I was thinking of staying maybe 2-3 days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare martincath Posted July 2 #9 Share Posted July 2 On 7/1/2024 at 3:53 PM, larry_s_taco said: How many days should I plan to explore what I can from the downtown area? I have no idea what is there to explore but I was thinking of staying maybe 2-3 days. It does depend on the kind of things you enjoy doing... our first visit to Vancouver though, long before we moved here, we came for a full week with one day each in Victoria and Whistler, and left regretting the Victoria day (everything was good, it was just waaaaay too much for one day so we had to blow off the next mornings planned activities in Vancouver to recover - and we flew both ways, saving 4+ hours compared to folks who do the day trip by coach & ferry!) We're the kind of folks who spend 3 hours in a big museum or a big garden, reading labels, making sure we hit all the exhibit rooms or sections - and we have a broad range of interests so we visited pretty much all the museums and galleries downtown, spent most of a day in Stanley Park between the Seawall, various parts of the park itself, lunch and the Aquarium, most of another day between QEP and VanDusen, a couple of guided walking tours. No car rental - mostly walking, a little transit use. So if you're fairly generalist in your interests, you could easily fill a week in Vancouver without ever getting bored; but if you're the kind of person who feels like you e.g. did justice to New York, London, Paris in 3 days then you should be fine with a couple of days here unless Nature is more your bag than Urban cultural stuff... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Urban trekker Posted July 7 #10 Share Posted July 7 And then there are some of us who have lived all our lives in the Metro Vancouver area and are still amazed to find new and interested thing we didn't know existed in the downtown core and Stanley Park. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hoot70 Posted July 30 #11 Share Posted July 30 We are headed to Alaska from Vancouver in June 2025. We are going up early to tour Vancouver. Planning on getting a rental car and staying in a motel somewhere. Wanting to see if anyone has done this and some questions we have. Is there a shuttle from the airport to rental cars? How to get from rental car return to ship port? Is there any hotels that have rental car drop at the hotel? Been reading some other post and seems like a taxi is the way to go. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
floridababa Posted August 8 #12 Share Posted August 8 We will be in Victoria in April 2025. We are there till 11:00 pm but the cruise line tours are not .much. Thinking about doing the HO HO but not sure where to pick it up. Any assistance would be appreciated Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare martincath Posted August 8 #13 Share Posted August 8 On 7/29/2024 at 5:13 PM, Hoot70 said: We are headed to Alaska from Vancouver in June 2025. We are going up early to tour Vancouver. Planning on getting a rental car and staying in a motel somewhere. Wanting to see if anyone has done this and some questions we have. Is there a shuttle from the airport to rental cars? How to get from rental car return to ship port? Is there any hotels that have rental car drop at the hotel? Been reading some other post and seems like a taxi is the way to go. YVR has multiple car rentals on and off-site; several downtown rental offices are easily walkable from the pier, and there's always at least one rental franchise on-site at Canada Place (the building contains the pier, the Pan Pacific Hotel, lots of parking) but the franchisee does change occasionally. Downtown Vancouver in general is compact, easily walked around, safe, and you'll find rental cars located at many of the fancy hotels, but less than a mile from basically every downtown hotel. Compare the cost of your car rental carefully - all airport locations get hit with a hefty extra daily fee, I think just over 20%, but if you have a different drop point planned might still find the cheapest overall rate is from YVR. Use Costco if a member, or Kayak, which both enable comparing multiple rental locations at once with different firms to minimise the time taken to compare all options. Unless you do stay 'out in the sticks' with free parking, or have a big group, a car is often pricey and inconvenient given parking costs and the frequency of break-ins to any car with shiny things left on display! The vast majority of our popular tourist sites are downtown or convenient for transit - some even have 'free' shuttles from downtown - and one of the cheapest hotels in the entire region is also one of the best (YWCA Hotel) and bang downtown. I think that Vancouver proper has only one remaining true Motel still in business - the 2400 - and it's horribly out of date with no renos for decades, although is one of very few 'cottage' motels left anywhere in the world now, often gets filmed in. 1 hour ago, floridababa said: We will be in Victoria in April 2025. We are there till 11:00 pm but the cruise line tours are not .much. Thinking about doing the HO HO but not sure where to pick it up. Any assistance would be appreciated HOHO stops running very early - if you have a typical ~4hr stop, it will have already stopped running by the time you arrive; even if it's a longer 6hr visit, you might not even have time to complete a loop of the HOHO as last departure is IIRC 5pm, so unless it's an unusually long stop in Vic your options are very, very slim. Evenings in Victoria are unfortunately very slow - it is not a town of party animals, government 9-5ers and Retirees are the Generic Victorians so the city buttons up early! Cruiseline tours and expensive charters of carriages are the only reliable evening group tours, and virtually every ticketed attraction will be shut by 5 or 6pm in April. Butchart Gardens might open later, if the cruiseline is running tours! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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