May 7, 2026

Vancouver is a sophisticated and culturally diverse city set against a magnificent backdrop of mountains, forests and the Pacific Ocean. It juxtaposes natural scenic beauty with exciting urban flair and offers award-winning restaurants, boutiques and cultural activities.

The main cruise port in Vancouver is the Canada Place Cruise Terminal. It’s the largest waterfront terminal in Canada with the famous white sail-like roof structures on top. Your ship arrives right in downtown Vancouver, and you can usually walk to nearby shopping and restaurants from the terminal. We have sailed into Vancouver before and remembered how close the viewing public was to our cabin balcony. Many passengers were alarmed to see gawking strangers greet them as they opened their cabin blinds.

When you are in a city you tend to do “city stuff.” This took a bit of an adjustment after spending a week in Alaska. But Vancouver has a great downtown with a famed shopping district, which was a big draw for international visitors during the Olympics. The downtown boasts 200 boutiques and specialty shops and at night it comes alive with the twinkling lights of a multitude of fine restaurants.

As a matter of fact, Vancouverites (yes, that’s what they call them) eat out more than people in any other North American city. There are more restaurants opening per capita each year than anywhere else in North America. And there are now over 100 food trucks, carts, and vendors permitted to sell healthy, interesting, convenient, culturally diverse, and delicious food on Vancouver streets.

Gastown is one of Vancouver’s most famous tourist areas. Just to be clear that the founding fathers of Vancouver did not make the awful marketing blunder of naming a part of the city after Flatulence, an explanation for the name choice is surely warranted.

Gastown got its name from a colorful local character nicknamed “Gassy” Jack. His real name was John Deighton, an English sailor and saloon owner who arrived in the area in 1867 when it was mostly wilderness and sawmill workers. He earned the nickname “Gassy Jack” because he was extremely talkative — “gassy” in those days referred to someone who was always chatting and telling tales. Now you know the real story.

I always like to try and find old photos of places that we are visiting that show what an area once looked like compared to present day. Here is a photo of Gastown in “Gassy Jack’s” day compared to Gastown today.

The steam-powered clock is Gastown’s most famous landmark. It is just 16 feet tall, but quite lovely with its four clock faces, etched glass sides showing the clock’s mechanism and weights, and five steam whistlers on top. You’ll find it on the corner of Cordova and Water Streets. Built to cover a steam grate that was part of Vancouver’s distributed steam-heating system, it “blows its top” on the quarter hour with the Westminster chime. Here’s a photo of the Gastown Steam Clock and a video of it in action.

Gives new meaning to the phrase “I need to blow off some steam.”

Thanks for traveling with us.