North America
Mountains, ocean and wilderness, wrapped around laid-back cities.
Canada is a country of jaw-dropping wilderness on a continental scale — the Rockies, endless forests and lakes, polar bears and whales — with a handful of relaxed, multicultural, supremely liveable cities. Vancouver is the west-coast gem: a glass-towered city cradled between the Pacific and the Coast Mountains, where you can ski and sail in the same day, cycle a seawall past totem poles, and eat some of the best Asian food outside Asia. Outdoorsy, easygoing and ringed by staggering nature.
What things cost: Canada is expensive — Vancouver especially, with high accommodation costs, plus taxes and tipping (15–20%) added on top. Nature is the payoff, and much of it is free or cheap; the seawall, the beaches and the parks cost nothing. When a zone below says 'low', that means low for Vancouver, which is dear.
Sometimes the event picks the city for you.
A beloved, long-running festival of folk and world music on the grass at Jericho Beach Park, with the mountains and sea as a backdrop — a mellow, family-friendly weekend of music, crafts and food in a glorious summer setting. A quintessentially laid-back Vancouver event.
Vancouver · Jericho Beach Park
The world's largest offshore fireworks competition — over three summer nights, countries put on dazzling fireworks displays choreographed to music over English Bay, watched by hundreds of thousands from the beaches and seawall. A spectacular, free highlight of the Vancouver summer; stake out a beach spot early.
Vancouver · English Bay
One of the largest film festivals in North America — ten days of hundreds of films from around the world, with a strong focus on Canadian and Asian cinema, across the city's downtown cinemas. A cultured reason to visit in the crisp early autumn, as the summer crowds thin.
Vancouver · Downtown cinemas
