Frommer's Vancouver & Victoria 2005
Chapter One
The Best of Vancouver
& Victoria
If you really want to understand Vancouver, stand at the edge of the Inner Harbour
(the Canada Place cruise-ship terminal makes a good vantage point) and
look around you. To the west you'll see Stanley Park, one of the world's largest
urban parks, jutting out into the waters of Burrard Inlet. To the north, just
across the inlet, rise snow-capped mountains. To the east, right along the water,
is the low-rise brick-faced Old Town. And almost everything else you see lining
the water's edge will be a new glass-and-steel high-rise tower. As giant cruise
ships glide in to berth, floatplanes buzz in and out, and your ears catch a medley
of foreign tongues, you may wonder just where on earth you are. Vancouver
is majestic and intimate, sophisticated and completely laid back, a bustling,
prosperous, world-class city that somehow, almost miraculously, manages to
combine its contemporary, urban-centered consciousness with the free-spirited
magnificence of nature on a grand scale.
Vancouver is probably one of the "newest" cities you'll ever visit, and certainly
it's one of the most cosmopolitan. I can guarantee you ... read full excerpt from Frommer's Vancouver & Victoria 2005 ebook
