Vancouver, British Columbia, offers a wealth of activities and entertainment to visitors, from the fine arts (ballet, opera, museums) to professional sports, great shopping to skiing and boating. During our visit there earlier this month, we chose to spend time outdoors on a few lovely fall days visiting two sites of which the city is justly proud.

We spent an enlightening afternoon at the Vancouver Aquarium, located within the expansive, urban Stanley Park. The aquarium presents a number of marine habitats, from the Canadian Arctic and B.C. Coast to the Amazon rainforest. One can watch Pacific white-sided dolphins leap and interact with their trainers or catch a brief show featuring a mother-daughter beluga whale duo while learning about these beautiful mammals and their threatened habitats. Other residents include penguins, sea otters, poisonous frogs and chinook salmon. We were mesmerized by several tanks filled with multiple species of luminous and gracefully drifting jellyfish.

Another day we spent a few hours exploring the University of British Columbia Botanical Garden, which actually encompassed a series of gardens, the largest of which was the Asian Garden. Located on a deeply forested hillside, the garden includes an amazing collection of rhododendrons (some over 20 feet tall) and trees, shrubs and vines from throughout China, Korea, Japan and the Himalayas. We spent 45 minutes with a guide on the Greenheart Canopy Walkway, a series of catwalks and platforms suspended from towering hemlocks and Douglas firs which allow one to get an aerial view of the forest floor and traverse through the canopy 50 to 70 feet above the ground.   As we swayed from one platform to another over the 1,000-plus-foot course, we learned to identify the different trees around us and how the Native Americans used different parts of them. (Did you know that hemlock needles contain a high amount of Vitamin C and helped stave off scurvy during the long, gray winter months?)

We finished our visit with a stroll through the Alpine, Native, and Food gardens, and I was particularly impressed with the intricately espaliered fruit trees and arbors which were loaded with richly colored apples and pears awaiting harvest. Surrounding these were expanses of lawn with beautiful maple trees beginning to flare with autumn color. After several days traveling the streets of downtown Vancouver, it was a lovely way to finish our visit.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor