Couple of questions about Vancouver

[clskinsfan]

We are doing a 10 night Celebrity cruise in May out of Vancouver for our 25th. I bid on a 5 star and got the Trump tower. We are in Vancouver for 3 nights pre cruise. Can we walk to Canada Place from Trump tower on embarkation day? Or will a cab be necessary. Also our return flight on the 19th does not leave until 9:00 PM. Does anyone know if their is a way to store our luggage for the day so we can explore the southern part of the city on that day? We would like to visit Queen Elizabeth Park and maybe find a decent restaurant around that area to kill some time.  Thanks for the help!

[martincath]

1) Can we walk to Canada Place from Trump tower on embarkation day?

It's definitely walkable, but whether YOU can do it I don't know;-) Here's a map - it's pretty flat, a slight slope here & there depending exactly which route you choose, a little over half a mile.

 

2) ... return flight on the 19th does not leave until 9:00 PM. ... is a way to store our luggage for the day so we can explore the southern part of the city?

Yes - you can leave your bags at the Pan Pacific hotel directly above the pier for $5 each (or with official pier storage CDS for $8 each). However storage in this case would be inefficient, forcing you to come back and collect your bags! This would mean wasting an hour or more getting to & from QEP which you then have to go past again to get to YVR, so you would be much better to always move south. Use CDS to send your bags to YVR instead - it's $40, but that gets you up to 4 bags transferred. PorterGenie also started operating last year (they'll come get bags anywhere, then drop them anywhere, and if you have only 1 or 2 bags this would be cheaper but as soon as you hit 3+ it's cheaper with CDS). As a local I can't say qualitatively if one is better than the other, but logistically there are far fewer moving parts with CDS so there are fewer points for something to go wrong.

 

Do downtown core stuff first, then head out to QEP - if it seems like that will be about lunchtime, then dining in Seasons in the Park would be an excellent choice as it has possibly the best view of any restaurant in the area (it's on the highest point, facing north & a little west so you get a sweeping view across Vancouver and the North Shore mountains, sunsets if you're up there in the evening etc. and a quarry garden literally right in front of the restaurant). It's not cheap, but the extra couple of bucks a dish compared to other restos without a view are totally worth it for the location.

 

From QEP if you are heading straight to the airport, you can use transit - the Canada Line has a stop down the hill at King Edward - or the resto will call you a cab (in fact you may even see a couple of cabs outside the resto lurking, it's a popular spot and we take drink-driving very seriously up here so there are plenty of fares from Seasons for the cabbies!) I'd assume about $20 to YVR depending on traffic, and about the same from downtown to the park if you come by cab. If you transit to the park a regular Compass ticket on SkyTrain does let you transfer onto a bus to avoid walking up the hill from King Eddie - or you can take a bus the whole way from downtown, the 50 for example is a great 'tourist bus' route as it starts in Chinatown, passes through the downtown core, gets closer to Granville Island than any other route, then changes number to the 15 Cambie service and continues south to QEP!

 

A 9pm flight means probably no US preclearance - CBP close at 8:30pm. Arriving 2 hours preflight will be enough even if you do get precleared though. The timing does make it tricky to get a decent dinner in before you head to YVR - if you've been on the Early Fixed dining with the cruise and are used to eating at 5:30pm you could shovel something down then head to YVR, but if not expect to eat at the airport so come a bit earlier to allow time for that (or suffer the delights of airplane food and dinner at ~10pm!)

Edited April 1, 2019 by martincath
forgot map link

[clskinsfan]

Thanks so much for your reply! All great info and we will put it to use. For those who had similar questions here is the link for CDS. We will be going this route and using public transit throughout the day. Since we have 3 nights pre cruise we will most likely have done everything in the northern part of the city. So having this extra day to knock out the southern part is a bonus. Thanks again.

 

http://www.cdsbaggage.ca/