Gastown Sunday Set

The cliche that earned it. Eight free volleyball nets, a driftwood log, and English Bay going full pink.

Movies under the stars on the North Vancouver waterfront, by donation.

Ten days of free waterfront concerts, an artisan market and wine gardens along West Vancouver's Ambleside seawall.

Former basalt quarry turned sunken flower garden, with a stone bridge that has starred in approximately every Vancouver wedding photo.

Grab Denman Street takeout, claim a driftwood log, and watch the sun drop behind the North Shore mountains. Free, always.

Vancouver's best kite-flying lawn sits between Kits Beach and Granville Island, with a postcard skyline view and zero admission.

Stanley Park's west-facing sandy cove, where everyone on the seawall cycles past while you watch the real show.

A flat mirror-still lake loop that grows 700,000 lights every November and calls itself Lights at Lafarge.

Tiny rainbow ferries, five-minute crossing, Granville Island oysters, and a skyline that glows on the way home.

A dead-level wetland trail at the foot of Burke Mountain with herons, eagles, kingfishers and Golden Ears framed across the Pitt River.

West Van's waterfront walk puts Lions Gate, Stanley Park and the whole downtown skyline across Burrard Inlet at your disposal.

Fifty-five acres of themed gardens with a hedge maze designed, architecturally and on purpose, for getting pleasantly lost together.

Ten minutes through never-logged Douglas firs to warm granite bluffs above the Point Atkinson lighthouse and Howe Sound.

Sailboats, mountains, evergreens and a flat free walk from Jericho to Locarno. Vancouver's gentlest waterfront at late afternoon.