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Trolley featured in the UK's Holiday Please article:

Vancouver trolley tour

Charles Duncombe is a director at www.holidaysplease.co.uk who specialise in Vancouver holidays and other exclusive worldwide destinations.

If you want to see everything that Vancouver has to offer you have two choices. You either buy a floor to ceiling map of the city and plot your route around it like a four star general planning for war ....or you take the trolley bus with the Vancouver trolley company.

The beauty of the trolley bus is that unlike a normal bus it goes to all the major attractions and you don’t need to plot a variety of different routes. Also, unlike a hire car you get interesting commentary along the route rather than complaints from your partner as to how hard the map is to read!

So, I picked up the trolley bus “red route” first thing in the morning from outside the Fairmont Waterfront. I recommend that you start early as it can easily take a full day to see the sights on offer.

While we were in rush hour, the beauty of starting near the Waterfront is that Stanley Park is very close and you head straight towards it in the opposite direction to the rush hour traffic.

We arrived at Stanley Park around 15 minutes later and immediately we were greeted by a fantastic view back over the water to the skyline of the city of Vancouver.

It was at this point that we did our first bit of hopping as we “hopped off” at the first stop in Stanley Park to visit the Vancouver aquarium. This is well worth a visit due to its comprehensive range of aquatic wildlife stretching from the tropics to the arctic. There are not many places where you can come face to face with Piranha one minute and then a full size Beluga whale the next!

After an hour or so we left the aquarium and went back to the trolley bus stop. Within 10 minutes the next trolley bus had arrived and we continued our adventure.

The bus took us around the outside of Stanley Park where we could see the famous sea wall. This wall allows joggers and cyclists to circumnavigate the park with a welcome, fresh sea breeze. I must admit though that some of the slower joggers made me wonder whether there were street lights to accompany them when the park got dark.

The trolley bus driver explained that the sea wall took decades to complete with it a number of times encountering financial difficulties in its completion. Good to see that builders estimates are the same the world over!

The park itself is a very good size, around 10% larger than New York City's Central Park. It took us around 20 minutes to travel through, much of which was through a beautiful woodland trail. With around half a million trees in the park and many measuring up to 250 ft there was a lot of neck straining from the passengers in the bus.

After we left Stanley Park we decided to get off the Red Route and walk a few blocks to the next stop on the Blue Route. The Blue Route would take us by Granville Island and then out to the east of the city.

Sure enough within 5 minutes of arriving at the Blue Route trolley stop, a trolley bus turned up.

First it took us to Granville Island which is a very cosmopolitan and vibrant place to be. Here you can see local shops, markets and artists which combine to provide a kaleidoscope of energy, colour and culture.

As much as we were tempted by the smell of freshly baked bread we couldn’t stop as we had our schedule to keep up.

We continued around to the east and went passed the Rogers stadium which is home to the famous Vancouver ice hockey team. Having seen the speed of the game in the play offs I was hoping that the glass on the trolley bus was reinforced.

We then “hopped off” again to stop at the science museum. To be honest it was more geared towards children than adults and so we didn’t spend too much time there. It did give us the chance though to walk through Chinatown to Vancouver’s police museum.....

As well as coming face to face with crimes, knives and machine guns you will find yourself ending up in the old city morgue. Here there are various body parts in jars together with stories as to how their owners met their maker.

It was all very interesting in a pretty gruesome way. Unlike many visitors we left the morgue alive and you guessed it, got on the trolley bus.

It took us to Gastown which is home to the famous Vancouver steam clock. It is also only a stone’s throw from the Vancouver lookout. The lookout is a tower gives a spectacular view of the city with a knee trembling ride up in their glass elevators.

After we landed back on earth it was then just a quick stop and we were back at the waterfront.

It was a thoroughly enjoyable day. We felt that we had fit so much in and thanks to the Trolley bus there was not a single argument with my partner about which direction to go!