Vancouver is fast-growing and traffic is horrible – I don’t know how they will get their act together in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics, but maybe there is naturally less traffic in the winter.
We stayed in Surrey on the outskirts of Vancouver is a poorly maintained RV park named Dogwood. The BigBus company operates red buses in Vancouver on a hop-on/hop-off basis. Because we are a large group they picked us up at Dogwood and sped us to town in what seemed like an old school bus after the jaws-of-life removed the roof from the back half. We had something like 62 people and they brought a bus with 58 seats – not a good start. Speeding down the freeway, saliva and hair flying, we landed in Vancouver and began a city tour in the same bus. The commentary was all recorded but the speakers didn’t work in the back of the bus. The driver cranked up the volume of the front speakers to try and help, driving the front passengers crazy. The tour left all with a headache and bad impression. Marcia and I spent a few days in Vancouver in January two years ago and came away very impressed by the city, but the BigBus routed our group through areas no tourist would ever go. Many fellow caravaners chose not to spend any more time in Vancouver.
The hop-on/hop-off process was available to us for later touring but didn’t work particularly well, with long waits at many stops. A rival company using trolleys came by more frequently and appeared to provide live commentary.
Not to be missed are the free city trolleys that provide transportation and commentary around Stanley Park.
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