All about VANCOUVER, my home

hello friends so over the years we have gone to a lot of interesting places together Ireland Sweden Israel Montreal Saskatchewan but the one place we have never gone together for some reason is the city where I actually live Vancouver but of course that's easy enough to fix so I was born in Vancouver and have lived most of my life here so there's not many places that I know better Vancouver is located here in the furthest western part of Canada in good old British Columbia it sits on what is basically a big Peninsula extending out into an inlet of the Pacific Ocean which is known as the Burrard Inlet it is named after this guy Sir Harry bard a British politician who did not discover found or even visit Vancouver but still has a lot of things named after him Vancouver itself by the way is named after this guy George Vancouver who actually did explore parts of the Pacific Northwest he was British but he was of Dutch heritage which is why his name was Vancouver now there are a few big things that Vancouver has going for it one of which is that the Pacific Northwest is a uniquely beautiful part of the world and Vancouver is a city very much designed to exploit that beauty so you can see the nice mountains in the background and you're always close to the water and nature Vancouver also has the best weather in Canada it very rarely snows here and the temperature never goes below zero even in the winter which is extremely unusual by Canadian standards in fact Vancouverites often have a bit of a chip on their shoulder when they hear foreigners talk food how cold Canada is not all of Canada we say being in the Pacific Northwest however we do get a god-awful amount of rain and a god-awful amount of businesses that think it is clever to call themselves rain City this or that another thing I like about Vancouver is that it is a relatively small city by big city standards it has just over 600,000 people and is located in a relatively compact area making it easy to walk around but I mean Vancouver is also unusual in that it also has this giant blob attached to it called Greater Vancouver that's full of smaller cities no one has heard of so by that definition maybe Vancouver's not so small after all but down Vancouver at the very least is very compact let me show you so you come to Vancouver on one of these things which we call a sky train which is really just a glamorized monorail / subway type deal you can use them to get from one part of Vancouver to another as well but I prefer to walk and if you are going to walk let me give you the ultimate downtown Vancouver path it goes like this Robson Street Denman Street av Street Granville Street Robson is the trendy Street full of the high priced shopping when the big American cruise ships dock in Vancouver on their way to Alaska this is where you're supposed to spend your afternoon lots of expensive fashion stores and whatnot the bottom half of the street is very Korean so if you're into Korean food or suspiciously cheap luggage this is where to go Robson connects - Denman Street which has a lot of fun restaurants the best one is this place here where you can buy Donaire and these fries that are so greasy and salty they're more grease and salt than man and I love them but the best part about Denman is that it connects to English Bay English Bay is a scenic beach right here on the coast of the Burrard Inlet during the summer it's an extremely popular place to hang out though as you can see that's not so much the case in late October but still a beach in Canada I mean there's not many of those Denman connects to Davie Street which is best known for being the gay street but it's a pretty lively place with more to it than just that it has a lot of good sushi restaurants for instance and lastly we have good old Granville Street Granville Street is mostly known as the street where all the bars and clubs and concert venues and hostels are so it's always pretty bumpin on the weekends it's a pretty fun place to just walk down because there's so many people milling about everywhere just try not to choke on all the Cologne all right and then after you're done all of that it is time to check out some of n Coover's beloved tourist traps so the most painfully iconic tourist thing to do in Vancouver is to come here to gas town gas town is basically a part of the city recreated to be a not terribly persuasive speculative recreation of what Vancouver might have looked like in the late 19th century according to developers in the late 1970s today I'd say it's about 70 percent souvenir shops there percent overpriced boutiques but in terms of sheer tourists Kitsch nothing can compare with this thing the beloved gas town clock it's a clock that pretends to be powered by steam even though it's not it also pretends to be old but it was actually built in 1977 anyway tourists can't get enough of it much less obnoxious but no less touristy is where I am right now Granville Island it is located right across from the downtown core by this body of water known as false creek to get to the island you have to take one of these special little ferries or you know the bridge anyway Granville Island is home to the Granville Island public market which is this bustling hive of shopping fun or you can buy all sorts of fresh foods and various knickknacks my advice is to buy a deep-fried salmon burger here and a chocolate doughnut here just don't let the horrible seagulls steal it tourists fun thing number three would be to look at some of our allegedly iconic buildings like the Canada Place Convention Center with the weird sailboat roof or our amazing sports stadium with its retractable roof or our knockoff Space Needle thing or the Pepsi presents Telus world of science brought to you by MasterCard where the roof is just a giant ball at night they light it up to make it look like things look it's a pumpkin I don't recommend going inside however it's for babies this weird building in gas town is also considered iconic for reasons I don't completely understand if you feel like leaving the downtown we have a whole host of other tourist attractions for you ones that play off our alleged love of nature first is Stanley Park the largest urban park in Western Canada named Stanley Park it's a big park located on a little Peninsula off the vancouver peninsula itself like some sort of forest in Toomer you can walk around the perimeter of it on the iconic seawall trail which goes right up against the water and is popular with joggers and bikers some of the stuff inside the park is vaguely interesting too like totem poles the aquarium big trees the president warren g harding death memorial and the abandoned polar bear exhibit another beloved tourist gimmick is coming here to Grouse Mountain everyone who comes to Vancouver wants to one of British Columbia's famous mountains but all the good ones take like several hours to drive to so instead we send all the tourists here to Grouse Mountain which is lamer but considerably closer the thing you do on grouse mountain is go up this thing the grouse mountain gondola and then check out all of the exciting activities at the mountains peak but unfortunately I had the bad luck to film this video during the one week a year in which the mountain is closed so we won't be able to go up and see anything but I'm sure there must be some sort of promotional grouse mountain video we can watch instead discover the thrill of grouse mountain just 15 minutes from downtown [Music] come face to face with grizzly bears face to face with grizzly bear face to face with grizzly bears but if you're looking for an even more gimmicky way to be at one with nature you have to do the ultimate Vancouver tourist thing and go to the Capilano Suspension Bridge now I confess I have never actually been to the Capilano Suspension Bridge before it's one of those New Yorker never goes to see the Statue of Liberty type things but they have a free bus that goes straight there so what am I waiting for bus actually picks you up right here in front of the Vancouver Public Library now the cool thing about the library is that hey Jay Jay did you know that the original name for Seattle was New York City the library did you know that Vancouver has hosted the Olympics and Seattle has not well obviously but B I'm sorry I keep interrupting you how about this how about after you're done watching this video you come over to my channel you know watch my video comparing Seattle and Vancouver and you can learn even more yeah that sounds great that is mr. feet by the way the charming kanzen high school teacher who makes verifying educational videos on his own channel we are both doing videos about the Pacific Northwest this week so we thought it would be fun to do a little cross-promotion oh look here's the bus alright so here we are 53 95 this better be good so the Capilano Suspension Bridge as you can see is this narrow bridge in the middle of the woods suspended over a gushing River 200 feet below some people really get freaked out by it but the thing is so obviously reinforced within like an inch of its life there's not much to worry about I suspect more people get pushed off for taking obnoxious selfies than fall off on their own in order to flesh out the experience a bit there are also exhibits aboot history and nature and a cafe in a gift shop and this whole cool other bit where you can go on a little treetop walk just like in Donkey Kong Country well now I can say that I've done this i also have a yearly past now so if you're ever in the area let me know and i will hook you up so i hope you enjoyed this little tour of vancouver I won't do the traditional bit at the end where I look at some souvenirs because I already made a whole other video about Vancouver souvenirs as with any city there is obviously a lot more I could have talked about if I had more time maybe someday I will do a second Vancouver video I'm curious to know if any of you guys have ever been to Vancouver yourselves and if you have what your memories of it were what you liked what you didn't like what surprised you so let me know in the comments don't forget to check out mr. beats video comparing Vancouver to Seattle and I will see you all next week

Channel: J.J. McCullough

Views: 387,683

Keywords: Vancouver, guide to vancouver, Vancouver BC, British Columbia, Vancouver tourism, BC tourism, British Columbia tourism, things to do, trip to Vancouver, local, explain, explainer, science world, denman, granville, robson street, davie street, downtown, Canada tourism, capilano suspension bridge, grouse mountain, stanley park, seawall, burrard, george vancouver, gastown, tourist trap, tourist attraction

Id: a3SxUWbsPKw

Length: 10min 14sec (614 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 02 2019