Would you believe that I’ve called Vancouver home for most of my life and never once have I walked the Stanley Park Seawall? When the boy was visiting, I decided that it was the perfect time to finally experience for myself, what everyone else is talking about.
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Except we never made it that far.
We started the day off with a dim sum lunch before getting side tracked in Gastown and beer at Steamworks. But eventually we got started and headed down towards Coal Harbour.
Walking down from the Vancouver Convention Centre
Coal Harbour is also home to float planes that take you to Victoria, BC. I was once fortunate enough to take a float plane and it was a pretty cool experience. The plane is small and you really feel all the ups and downs so it was good that it was such a short flight! Landing and taking off from water is strange too.
Float planes and a view of the North Shore mountains
Much of the route is clearly marked with one for pedestrians and one for bikes. Be careful you’re not walking in the bike lane! Bikers in Vancouver can be vicious and they will yell at you to get out of their way. I witnessed a few close calls and one biker getting upset at pedestrians on this day as we walked along. 
We stumbled across this art piece called LightShed by Liz Magor. Installed in 2004, it was a gift to the city. It was built based on the shape of old boat sheds that lined these shores. Everyone that passed this piece was intrigued by what it was and got a little closer to inspect it. 
Coal Harbour wouldn’t be much of a harbour if it didn’t have some boats.
Fancy big boats
Before long, we turned the corner and entered Stanley Park.
Vancouver is gorgeous when it’s sunny don’t you think?
You can sort of see the “wall” that we’re walking on. It becomes more of a wall further in the park.
About 1km, we found a map and realized that the whole route was a lot longer than I anticipated. For some reason I thought it was only 4-5 KM around. Boy was I wrong. It was actually 9KM. It was getting later in the day and I was hungry. Plus the boy had just arrived the previous day and was fighting jet lag (props to him for keeping up for so long!), so we decided to call it quits and head for some food at the Richmond Night Market.
So I tried and failed to walk the seawall along Stanley Park, but at least I’ve walked the length of the Coal Harbour section! I’ll have to save it for a nice crisp Vancouver fall day.
In truth, the modern construction of the Seawall can take you from Canada Place to Coal Harbour, the entire way around Stanley Park, to First Beach (English Bay Beach), under the three downtown bridges on the north shore of False Creek, to Science World, and onto Olympic Village on the south shore of False Creek. Some might not view this strictly as a “single wall”, but fact is one can do that entire walk uninterrupted. That would be a great in-town day-trip; how’s that for an idea for another blog post? 😉
Yup very true and it wasn’t until recently that I found out about the part on False creek. I’d love to be able to do it all in a day, but knowing me (and my slight aversion to exercise), I’ll probably break it up. But it’s definitely an area that I want to explore more!