Sunset Among the Totems on Burnaby Mountain

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

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

An iconic zig-zag staircase down through forest to a quiet pebble beach with big Boundary Bay sunsets and balancing-rock cairns.

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

A pocket botanical garden south of downtown Langley with a little tropical greenhouse, a gazebo, and benches made for lingering.

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.

A rare hike you can do in nice shoes, 5 km of coastal forest, rocks at the end, Indian Arm below.

Arrive an hour before sundown on Port Moody's waterfront pier, stay for the ice cream, extend with the nearby brewery row.

Stanley Park's quiet inner lake does herons, swans, a 1936 fountain and benches, without a single cyclist in sight.

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

Belcarra's moody wetland loop past silvery ghost trees and a drowned forest that looks like it is posing for a gothic album cover.

Surrey wandered off and became a seaside village, and Boundary Bay sunsets at Sullivan Point are the local proof.

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