Day 3: Vancouver and North Vancouver

Today we woke up, and went for a long run in Stanley Park.  We often do what we call "running tourism".  I think it's a great way to see a city, to spend time running in its parks and along its streets.  You see a bit more than walking (and get an idea of places you want to walk back to later) but still feel more grounded and with time to check things out than if you drove through.

I will admit it, Vancouver is a beautiful and amazing city.  You have a well planned, and very dense urban core.

The buildings all have appropriate set backs, and the zoning was planned long before the highrises even started getting built, so they are all well spaced with good sight lines and without the crowding you often feel in cities.

But not only that, the moment you step even a few feet out of the city (or take a ferry across the harbor), you are instantly in the mountains, surrounding by temperate rain forest, streams, canyons, ferns, and THE NATURE.

And it seems that Vancouverites have something for suspension bridges.

There are a few canyons just north of the city, and they all seem to suspension bridges across them in these great parks and natural reservations.

And you can get to them by public transportation in only half an hour, which means we got to do a lot of day hiking in the forest.  Which makes Molly happy.

And how could you not be, when things are this pretty?  We had planned to take the ferry across the harbor, and spend a little time at the Lonsdale Quay Market.  But in the process of buying lunch there, a very nice and polite Canadian (have I mentioned that everyone here is very nice and very polite?) mentioned we should check out the Lynn Canyon Park, and that catching a bus would take us less than half an hour from where we had lunch, and How is Vancouver treating you?, and Thanks for coming to visit us from Boston.
I half expected every person who asked where we were visiting from, and then inevitably told us something cool to check out, would eventually start handing us keys to their sports cars or their house or something.  Everyone is just that nice.

But anyway.  Lynn Canyon is less than 3 miles from Downtown Vancouver, but it looks like primeval forest, and feels like it.  

Being from a fairly flat and dry place, I still can't get enough of wet forests in the mountains.  Seattle was great; I'm definitely enamored by it.  Vancouver was even more of these things:  Forest, Mountains, Outdoor culture, Rain, and lots of it.   (I love the rain.)

And then the ferry ride back, with a great view of the Lionsgate Bridge, and Stanley Park.  What a place.