Comment by unixhero

Thanks for a great answer. I did visit Vancouver last year. Just arriving at the airpoirt with its lush green-blue colour scheme and a small river running through the hallways towards entering the country where the two tall totem poles wish all visitors a warm welcome. It felt like coming home.

In Vancouver we rented a car and visited almost all suburbs. For me the absolute dream would be Vancouver West, Vancouver North followed closely by Kitsilano. North and West seemed like a Twin Peaks dream all surrounded by the woods and mountains. I fell in love.

Downtown was in our view, beautiful but broken by (1) homeless roaming, (2) homeless with psychiatric issues making a scene and (3) opiate drug users aka junkies. It is not somewhere I want my kids to roam. This was terrible, but we are willing to overlook it.

We also went to Toronto. World class city. But we stayed in Vaughn and had to endure 1 hour commute in traffic each direction. Being stuck in traffic is not an appealing lifestyle. Toronto felt like an awesome world class metropolis city with more opportunities probably than Vancouver. Anecdotally the standup shows were better (actually most hilarious of all) in Toronto than Vancouver too :)