Fall Trip | Vancouver Day 4 Stanley Park

On Sunday 10/6 we decided to check out Stanley Park in the morning, since the forecast said no rain yet.  But first, breakfast!  We walked to Breka Bakery & Cafe on Davie Street, just a couple of blocks from our hotel.  It was well-reviewed on Yelp and on Google, so we were excited to try it out.  As you may recall, Todd does not like breakfast food in general due to his dislike of eggs and cheese.  But he does like pastries!

Believe it or not, pastry boy did eat most of BOTH the apple fritter donut and the apple strudel!  He deemed both very delicious.  I got the spinach & artichoke pocket, which had a filo dough pastry outside, filled with spinach, artichoke, and cheese.  They heated it up in a panini press.  It was delicious.

Three breakfast items, one chai latte, and one Americano… it all cost only about $20 CAD or $15 USD.  We can’t get good food this cheap in San Diego!

After breakfast, we walked to the Yaletown skytrain station to purchase the TransLink $10.50 CAD all day compass pass, which allows you to ride public transportation all day on the Vancouver buses, trains, and ferries.  We planned to take the bus to Stanley Park, take it back to the hotel, then take the bus to Gastown round trip the same night as well.  It was cheaper to get the all day pass than pay separately for the bus tickets.  After purchasing the passes, we walked a block and caught the bus towards Stanley Park. 

Also of note:  Google Maps is AWESOME for navigating metropolitan areas.  You can compare the travel time on foot, buses, bike, and by car.  AND it has the city bus routes and schedules.  So we knew exactly where and when to catch a bus to get to where we want to go.  We also prepared ahead of time and saved all the locations that we were interested in visiting into my Google Maps into a folder called “Vancouver”.  Then you don’t even have to type in locations, just choose from your “Vancouver” folder!  We were VERY impressed with the Vancouver transit system.  It ran on time, was very clean, and was widespread and convenient.  Thumbs up!  Here we are on the bus!

Another tip I have is regarding cell phone usage in Canada and Mexico.  We have Verizon and they have 24 hour “TravelPass” sessions in Canada for $5/day/phone.  So we decided ahead of time that we would pay for TravelPass on my phone and Todd shut off his cellular service in Canada and only used WiFi when available.  We used my phone for navigation and looking things up on the fly.  It worked perfectly and I was on the Bell Canada LTE network. 

We got to the entrance of Stanley Park and there were numerous bicycle rental shops.  We chose Spokes right on the corner across the street from the park entrance.  We rented a tandem bike and it was super reasonable.  I think we paid under $25 USD for almost two hours.

Since Stanley Park is about 10 km around the perimeter, we thought it would be easier and faster to see it via bike.  And it was beautiful!  For the first few kilometers you get to see views of downtown Vancouver.

We stopped at many points to take photos.  This is Brockton Point.

You can see the Lions Gate Bridge connecting Vancouver to North Vancouver (where we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park). 

It was a little windy and chilly on the bike, so we were glad we had jacket and vest.  It was not uncomfortable or cold though.

The Stanley Park trails worked wonderfully.  They separate out pedestrians from bikes so that bikes are on the slightly elevated inner trail and pedestrians walked on the lower outer trail.  That way bikes and people aren’t running into each other.  We thought that was awesome!

We ended our circle ride around Stanley Park around noon and caught the bus back to the hotel for some rest and snacks before our 3pm Vancouver Foodie Tour, which I’ll cover in a separate post!