Granville Island, Vancouver

Go shopping for fresh fruit, vegetables and yummy smoked salmon in the Granville Island Public Market! Granville Island is situated right under the Granville St. bridge on False Creeks and is famous for its public market, kids market, quaint art and gift shops, artists' studios and theatres. It's often very crowded, but this is a really nice place to bring your family. It's best to take the bus or ride one of those aquabus ferries, as it's quite diffcult to find parking here.

Granville Island. Artist studios, veggie stands, flower shops, entertainment and lots of people-watching opportunities. You can buy designer pasta or chocolate truffles, handpainted scarves or pottery from Morocco.

What many of the reviews for Granville Island fail to include (and if youre a beer fan like me,as were 3 enthusiatic Americans who seemed to have travelled up just to see this place) then you wont want to miss the "Granville Island Brewery" tour.The tour only goes at specific times and unlike larger brewery tours this building is small.
However our guide was very informative and you got to get hands on,smelling and tasting the barley.Best of all we got 6 sample tasters from this original Canadian Microbrewery..all of which were different but great in taste..Dont miss out!
Of course whilst here dont miss out on the opportunity to wander round this island (or spit of land),part of which is still industrial but most of which is dedicated to craft shops(some unusual stuff),museums a market(great and colourful fruit,veg and fish) as well as a restaurant overlooking the city skyline.
Allow a good afternoon to explore!

Granville Island is definately worth checking out. I reccomend taking the aquabus over from any of its stops downtown. Once you're at Granville Island there's lots to do and see. There are many artistic shops to check out for art supplies, hand made hats, jewellery, blown glass, etc.
The Granville Island Public Market is probably one of the best markets in Vancouver. You can buy fresh produce, seafood, etc. There's tons of stands and stalls selling everything and all very fresh.
You can also check out dance, theatre, music, comedy, etc. held at one of the venues on Granville Island.

What can I say about this place its a cool place to spend a couple of hours browsing the stalls and checking out people. I recommend this as a stop before heading into the city centre as you can get some great picnic stuff here for your lunch. You can get to the city centre by catching the little boat buses ($2-4) that run over to the other side of the inlet.

Granville Island is not really an island, but whatever. It's fun to take the little ferry over there, and there's a huge market with all kinds of food stands ranging from Polish (mmm, perogies) to Chinese to gourmet cheeses. We also went to a cool little bookstore, whose name I can't remember but they had a lot of books on local history. Also check out the children's market, which is two floors of shops that sell candy, toys and other fun stuff.

Well, granville island is just a great place to visit. Lots of activity going on, great view, great food, and of course, there is a store that sells fresh lobsters that you can pick and they cook for you. But remember to get them to crack it for you! My friend and I brought the lobster back to our hotel room for dinner, and realized that we had nothing to eat it with except for a pair of disposable chopsticks!

On a whim, we decided to stay at the Granville Island Hotel. We thought it may be a little out of our pricerange, but wound up being only $20 more. This hotel was beautiful with amazing views off the balcony and it's very own brewery, it was worth every penny.

The local chain restaurant, Jack Peppers had beautiful waitresses (good for guys), but lacked any good food.

The best part of Granville Island was the Granville Market. It was the best array of produce and meat that I have seen in a long time. A great place to grab a coffee and some fruit before going out on a long day.