Vancouver was pretty much invented by the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which wanted to build a transcontinental railroad but didn't have anywhere to end it, since the West was empty. So they randomly chose this place and a city developed around the railroad terminal. The oldest part of the city is Gastown, which has some old buildings, tourist shops etc. as well as Vancouver's famous drug addicts.



I realize I'm being fairly negative about Vancouver, so I should back up. As you probably know, it's regularly voted one of the top ten cities in the world, and we have lots of friends there so we had a very nice time. But we were there for a week because it was Christmas/New Years and all the Cathay flights back to Asia were full. So we had to stay much longer than needed to see the city, especially because it was of course bitter cold so we didn't really have the stamina for lots of walking around. So we mostly played with our friends or stayed in our hotel room, being warmed by the fire, watching our naked neighbors and waiting for our flight home.