FLY OR DRIVE VANCOUVER Part One of Four

Most travel writers agree that Vancouver is the most attractive spring and summer urban area in North America. Cooled by ocean breezes, this compact urban center combines great scenery, super restaurants, all sorts of fishing and other outdoor activities in what most feel is the cleanest large city anywhere and the most attractive city on the Pacific. Best of all, Canadian prices run lower than in the United States even before the delightful discovery that one US dollar buys around $1.49 Canadian. It's an especially attractive destination for RV owners who can stay in one of a number of fine Canadian parks and, with their savings, cab or use public transport to get around the compact downtown area. As a break going or coming from British Columbia, Vancouver Island or Alaska via the Alaskan Ferry System, Vancouver offers a super urban diversion.

All sorts of activities such as monorails and subways and a refurbished city ice the cake of quality attractions even after Expo. Classic diversions such as the Royal Hudson Steam Train ride, Granville Island shopping or the traffic stopping Canadian Geese in Stanley Park still delight.

We consider Vancouver a walker's town. The limited acreage between Stanley Park's green acres, fine aquarium and decent zoo and the mainland, pushed Vancouver up, on its peninsula rather like downtown San Francisco. We stay at the center of the network of underground malls that shelters locals from wet winters and are only a couple of blocks from the diverse shops, succulent ice cream and chocolate and inexpensive ethnic restaurants of Robson Street, called "Robsonstrasse" by long time residents for its diverse ethnic shopping.

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