Hoyaheel

Hi smart flyertalkers! We're headed to Vancouver Tuesday for a few days before an Alaskan cruise. Mostly will wander around and eat & drink :-) The only things we know for sure we want to do are visit Granville Island, the Sun Yat-Sen Chinese Garden, and Stanley Park (weather & energy permitting ;-) Wednesday and Thursday are the full days we have for exploring/touring - I've looked to see if there's any special market going on and haven't found anything. Is there anything we should be aware of to chose one day over another for any of these options? Thanks!!

CanadianMoocow

I'm going to assume you don't have a rental car so may be the hop-on-hop-off bus is the best way to visit all those places you want to see. You could try Capilano Suspension Bridge but it's a bit pricey to get in but they have a free shuttle bus from downtown. May be Richmond Night Market if you want to take a look, to be honest I found that place to be overrated but you can get there pretty easily from Downtown using the Canada Line Skytrain. If you do have access to a rental car, you can visit University of BC where they got a few gardens and museums. Another one would be VanDusen Garden which also need a car to access.

https://richmondnightmarket.com/
VanDusen Botanical Garden
Home Page | UBC Botanical Garden
https://attractions.ubc.ca/category/museums-galleries/

andrewesque

You don't actually need a car to get to UBC -- the 99 B-Line express bus will take you straight there (I've done it myself). There are transfers to the SkyTrain at Broadway-City Hall or Commercial-Broadway. There are lots of car-less UBC students so the bus line is pretty heavily utilized and frequent (Wikipedia claims it's the busiest line in Canada and the US, though who knows for sure).

Hoyaheel

We'll probably walk to the Garden and take the #50 bus to Granville Island. But apparently there's no better choice on days to visit the Public Market at Granville Island (that was my original question which I realize was not very clear) so we'll just play it by ear.....

Jay71

Unfortunately the weather has turned a bit after being fairly dry for a a few weeks but with some haze from the forest fires. Hopefully there won't be any heavy rain.
As you probably found out, there's generally not a lot of difference in going to GI on a Tue or Wed IMO. There's typically special events on the weekend like this past weekend when there was the Wooden Boat Festival. Walking to GI around the seawall or across the Cambie Street Bridge (Granville Street Bridge overshoots you) are kind of nice if the weather is nice.

Just to add note some other events around town, this week/weekend (which you may have found already anyways):
Daily Hive Vancouver has a good event list. Just google it.
Taiwanfest is happening this weekend in downtown. Not a must see but a good walkthrough.
The Aritzia Warehouse sale is happening at the convention centre if you're interesting in some shopping but it's a bit of a gong show in terms of line up.
We like going the Shipyards Night Market on Friday nights if the weather is nice. Great view of downtown Vancouver. Easily accessed from downtown via the Seabus and it's free..
I also think the Richmond Night Market is a bit over-rated. But it's cheap entry and has some interested food options.

Lots of other stuff to wrap up summer but not necessarily easily accessible or time well spent for a downtown tourist: Pacific National Exhibition, Corn Festival at Britannia Centre, various Farmers Markets, Nikkei Matsuri, Richmond World Festival, etc.

Hoyaheel

We've had a great time watching all the young women and their huge bags coming from the Aritzia sale, as it's just across the street from us! We walked over to the Sun Yat-Sen gardens yesterday and did the tour in a bit of rain - not terrible, we do pack appropriately ;-) Did some window shopping on our walk back to the hotel. After lunch, I wanted to see the totem poles in Stanley Park and our hotel has bikes to borrow, so we did that. It was nice in the afternoon - no rain, some sun etc. But the bike route in Stanley park is one way, so once you're in, you're committed to the entire route. That was a little more than I anticipated, as I hadn't been on a bike in at least 5 years. But we saw lots of wildlife, including seals, all sorts of birds, and many humans enjoying the nice afternoon :-)

We're going to Granville Island today - have been bickering still about how to get there. I'm winning on approach - we'll take the 50 bus - but I think husband could win return (he really wants to take the aquabus, which still leaves us far from our hotel....)