NEW VANCOUVER TOURS OFFER NEW PERSPECTIVES
By Lauren Kramer
(For Travel Writers' Tales)

Art Deco Tour: The art deco architectural style that punctuates Vancouver is highlighted on this tour, which takes guests back to a lesser known time in the city's history. (image credit: Forbidden Vancouver)

One great aspect of Vancouver sightseeing is that innovative tour operators are consistently coming up with fabulous tours that highlight the city's many offerings in a unique way. Here's a look at our top three Vancouver tours.

Voluptuously Vegan

As of 2016, when vegan restaurants began opening their doors in the city, Vancouver became a great place to pursue a diet of plant-based proteins. Today there's a plethora of fabulous establishments serving food so tantalizing you won't even notice the absence of meat, fish or poultry.

An offering by Vancouver Food Tour, the three-hour Vegan Food Tour is the only one of its kind in the city, escorting guests to a sumptuous meal served in four courses across four restaurants in Gastown and Chinatown.

It starts with beer-battered sweet chili cauliflower at Meet Restaurant, steps from the Gassy Jack statue in Gastown. At Virtuous Pie, a quickly expanding enterprise initiated by passionate vegan father Rob Milne and his two sons, we savoured the “Ultraviolet pizza.” With a toasty-thin base decked with walnut arugula pesto, cashew mozzarella, caramelized onion and oven-dried tomatoes, this is an unforgettably good pizza that redefines the very notion of what pizza needs to be.

Stop three is Kokomo, a restaurant specializing in vegan bowls and the brainchild of Katie Ruddell, a former Lululemon manager. We ordered the top seller, the Coastal Macro bowl, a spicy dish of marinated tempeh, edamame hummus, roasted squash and a turmeric sunflower dressing. Umaluma's ice cream was the grand finale for dessert, with an incredible array of vegan gelato flavours. It's a hardship selecting from flavours including lavender dream (with pure lavender essence), umaluma love (with vegan fudge, raspberry and roasted macadamias), drunken cherry (candied pecans and bourbon-soaked Italian cherries) and salted caramel sea foam.

The tour ends with a sated appetite and a take-home gift of your choice from Vegan Supply Chinatown, a hole-in-the-wall shop stocked with amazing products. Hint: ask for a sample of the vegan jerky!

Beer + Street Art

Street Art Tour: Visitors on the Street Art Tour get behind-the-scenes to view and discuss the meaning of some 25 murals. (image credit: Toonie Tours)

Since Vancouver's annual mural festival began in 2016, the city's back alleys have become the site of some thought-provoking murals splashed across the back walls of buildings large and small.

Nathan Murdoch combined his love for these ever-changing pieces of art with his affection for craft brew when he and two partners formed the Street Art & Craft Beer Tour a year-and-a-half ago.

During the two-to-three hour tour visitors are escorted on foot through the back roads and alleys of East Vancouver's Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, to peruse some 25 different murals and discuss the artists behind them and their respective meanings and intentions.

Some murals are downright bizarre, others are deeply thought-provoking, and one in particular, the mural in memorial for Holden Courage, a young street artist who lost his life in 2017, achingly sad.

The mural tour is peppered with visits to great breweries and back-end tours to learn about their individual stories. We started at Main Street Brewery, located in a building that dates back to 1888 and whose first commercial occupant all those years ago was a brewery.

In a back room Murdoch offers guests samples of different barley grains, discusses kettles and fermenters and delivers insight into the different stages of brewing. Other breweries on this fun, light-hearted tour are BrewHall and Big Rock Vancouver Brewery.

Art Deco & Chocolate Tasting

Street Art Tour 2: The murals on the Street Art Tour are selected to evoke reflection, discussion and to understand the city from different perspectives. (image credit: Toonie Tours)

Love architecture? You'll want to join this fabulous ‘history of Vancouver' tour that includes a guided walk through some of the city's most beautiful historic buildings. The three-hour tour weaves through the city's main arteries with fascinating explanations of the stories behind some of its landmarks.

Art Deco Tour 2: This pedestrian tour of Vancouver's main thoroughfares is fun, eye opening and full of interesting historical gems. (image credit: Forbidden Vancouver)

The Dominium Building, the Sun Tower, the Vogue Theatre, the Hotel Vancouver, the Commodore, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the fabulous Marine Building are all on the itinerary and their art deco style is unmistakable. Guides explain the meaning and nuances behind that architectural style, with historical images to showcase how the city looked at different times in history.

The walk is punctuated by chocolate stops at two reputable locations. Thierry Chocolaterie crafts French-style chocolates by Thierry Busset, who, according to Gordon Ramsay, is one of the finest pastry chefs in the world. Mink Chocolate Café, close to Canada Place, won the chocolate bar of the year award in 2014 for its Mermaid's Choice, a bar that will leave you in chocolate heaven.

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If You Go:

•  Beer + Street Art Tours cost $65 per person. Call (778)244-8648 or visit vancouvertoonietours.ca.

•  The Vegan Food Tour costs $80 per person. Info: VancouverFoodTour.com or call (778) 228-7932. .

•  Tickets for the three-hour history of Vancouver tour are $50 at forbiddenvancouver.ca.