* The Deux is because this post is about Canada and in Canada they always subtitle everything in French. Even stuff like hotel (hôtel), which should be a no-brainer. Canadian efficiency.
So anyway, Gastown and Granville Island are the two big tourist neighborhoods in Vancouver, and I spent a few hours wandering through each of them.
Gastown, in case you're wondering, was named after a dude named Gassy Jack Deighton. Awesome. He was the guy that founded Vancouver, in 1867. He built the first building in Vancouver, which, fittingly enough, was a saloon.
There's not much to see in Gastown but some cool architecture and a not-that-impressive steam clock that everyone is obligated to take pictures of:
Granville Island, on the other hand, has tons of cool stuff to see, especially because of its giant marketplace (sorta like Pike Place market in Seattle, only not quite as hip).
Granville Island is a lie -- it's not an actual island. It's a peninsula, but it feels like an island because you're stuck across the water from downtown Vancouver. The marketplace is situated under the Granville Street bridge, with a nice view of the downtown skyscrapers:
So on a nice sunny day, it's great to sit and watch all the people bustling around you, buying funky stuff like obscure herbs and soaps made out of odd recycled things.
After visiting Granville Island, I took a drive around Stanley Park, which is Vancouver's gigantimous city park. (It's even bigger than Central Park in NYC.) There are a lot of interesting things to see here: hand-carved totem poles, beaches, a lagoon, and beautiful views of the city and nearby mountains.
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