Departing from: Tampa International (TPA)
Flight duration: 6 hours 14 minutes
Nonstop flights: Seasonal
Airlines: Air Canada, WestJet
Where to Stay
Right on Vancouver’s waterfront, Fairmont Pacific Rim is a favorite for its sophisticated raw bar and gorgeous spa (note the couples suite with Japanese-style soaking tubs). For a boutique stay in an urban oasis, Granville Island Hotel has a gorgeous waterfront setting just minutes from downtown and access to watersports—kayaking and waterbiking—at its doorstep. In the city’s sought-after Coal Harbour neighborhood, Loden Hotel beckons with sumptuous rooms with floor-to-ceiling windows and an award-winning on-site French restaurant, Tableau Bar Bistro.
Where to Eat
Vancouver is renowned for its Asian cuisine scene, and Anh and Chi, run by a brother-and-sister duo, is a stylish spot for the city’s very best Vietnamese. Seasonal tasting menus that pay homage to British Columbia’s land and sea bounty—think morels, fiddleheads and Dungeness crab, for starters—make Michelin-starred Published on Main among the city’s most coveted tables. Vancouver’s most iconic seafood restaurant and chophouse is Joe Fortes Seafood & Chop House, with its turn-of-the-century dining room and rooftop patio with a lively bar and cozy fireplace.
What to Do
Get out in the city’s bracingly fresh Pacific Ocean air while pedaling a bike along Vancouver’s Seawall and into Stanley Park, an urban peninsula park with scenic trails and rainforest surrounded by Burrard Inlet and English Bay (Spokes Bicycle Rentals is the closest to the park). Taste your way through the indoor Granville Island Public Market, with everything from an organic baker and cheesemonger to vegan Vietnamese food and a purveyor of unpasteurized honey. Get your adrenaline pumping at Capilano Suspension Bridge Park in North Vancouver, where you can walk through a rainforest canopy and above a canyon. And get your steps in on the city’s most beloved hike, the Grouse Grind. Also called “Mother Nature’s Stairmaster,” it’s a roughly 1.5-mile hike up the face of Grouse Mountain, just 15 minutes from downtown (relax with a gondola ride back to the bottom).
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