August in Vancouver with a toddler

[Impala1980]

Hi!
We're going to be in Vancouver for the whole of August with our nearly two year old daughter. We'll be staying in an Airbnb flat in Coal Harbour.. Any tips for what to do and see would be greatly appreciated!

Also, what will the weather be like in August?

There is a brilliant science type museum with animals that you can get to by riverboat. we spent all day there. plus the parks and the outdoor pools are lovely. temps are usually similar to the uk early/mid 20's. hope you get some day trips out as well.

Stanley park is nice for kids. There is play equipment, beaches, and a bike path/walking path that circles the park (you can rent bikes, double bikes, possibly trailers) and runs alongside the sea front (with a seawall). Stanley park also has an aquarium.

Weather is very nice in August, usually summers are not too hot. It does rain a lot in Vancouver and unfortunately usually when it does rain it rains for AGES (if it's raining in the morning it will often rain all day!)

I don't advise wandering through the east part of Vancouver, very awful (sad) even during the day, East Hastings street particularly.

The sea bus (public transportation, linked to the skytrain network) is a cheap way to cross the harbour and will take you to the north shore and the Lonsdale Quay Market.

Grouse mountain (on the north shore) has a nice view and operates the tram (called the skyride) during the summer.

Capilano Suspension bridge (also on the north shore), good fun, maybe a bit scary if you're the nervous type (I am!).

Thanks! Some great ideas..

We spent a couple of nights in Vancouver last June and loved it. Stanley Park is great; we hired bikes (trailer for little ones?). We also enjoyed the little ferries which go around the harbours and I would especially recommend Granville Island market - well worth a visit and the ice creams are epic. Enjoy yourselves.

We took a ferry out to Victoria on Vancouver island for a couple of days, also bus up the coast for a couple of days. Granville island was fun the the totem pole carving was fascinating!!

We got back from our holiday in Vancouver with our 18mo DD just a couple of weeks ago. We had a great time!
I would recommend Stanley park - you can hire bikes with a child trailer to go on the back and bike around on the bike paths; there's a few beaches, playgrounds with equipment, a splash park (fountains coming out of the ground etc), and a big outdoor swimming pool too with a beach type slope at one end so brilliant for little ones. There's a nice sandy beach at Kitsilano and a similar swimming pool there too. We visited the Aquarium which our daughter loved (that's in Stanley park). I have heard the Science museum has a great interactive area for toddlers too although we didn't have time for it in the end. Granville Island is lovely to visit and has a "Kids market" which is a large building with lots of lovely toy and clothes shops for kids, as well as a soft play type area and an arcade - my daughter just liked running round pressing the buttons! On a previous visit we went up Grouse Mountain and they have animals including bears up there which your DD would enjoy I'm sure.

We stayed in Victoria for a couple of nights - she enjoyed the ferry taxi trips and running around the lawns of the Fairmont hotel and the Parliament building. We didn't visit the BC museum but they were about to open a new exhibition about mammoths with some live size models - Think it was going through to September so should still be there when you go.

Final part of our holiday was spent on Vancouver Island, we stayed near Parksville in the Rathtrevor beach resort area. Fantastic for kids and toddlers - big beaches with sand and tide pools, walks amongst the woods, and playgrounds in the resorts too.

General stuff... we ate out a lot because we found it easy with our daughter - they are totally used to families coming out to eat at 5:30 or 6pm and all restaurant staff were so welcoming and nice. Food in the supermarkets was relatively expensive - in Vancouver Island was almost Waitrose prices.

WOW I've just seen where Coal harbour is - you lucky lucky things - you are within an easy walk of Stanley park so I predict you'll spend lots of time there. I am massively jealous of you!!!

Thanks so much everyone! Getting really excited now...
Moggle- any tips for the jet lag?

Nah not anything magic! DD was back to normal on the 4th day on the way out, probably a day longer than it "should" have been - we were sharing a room with DD in a relatives house so that made it a bit worse! We couldn't let her cry as she'd have woken them up, and we woke her up a couple of times :-( I think making things dark at night time, and making sure she got plenty of sunshine in the day helped. We took our gro blind to help with the night time.