It rains a lot in Vancouver so rainy day activities in Vancouver are sometimes the only ways we get through. Thankfully, we Vancouverites have become pretty awesome at entertaining ourselves when the monsoon of the day hits. This city may be known for it’s epic mountain views, gorgeous coastal kayaking, and all around good time vibes on the beaches. But let’s be real, only a true Vancouverite can figure out things to do in Vancouver when it rains and still have a blast!
So if you’re looking for a rainy day activities in Vancouver, or if you’re a tourist and you need an tourist attraction to do in the rain in Vancouver, this blog is for you!
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Escape Rooms in Vancouver!
Anybody who has talked to me this past year knows how much I love escape rooms. They are everything that I love: puzzles, mysterious mechanics, and the feeling of absolute conquest when you solve all of the riddles and get yourself out of the room. Escape rooms have totally exploded in Vancouver in recent years, and for damn good reason.
Don’t know what an escape room is? You’re missing out. An escape room is basically 2 or 3 adjoined rooms filled with puzzles, riddles, and games that you and your team need to solve to move on to the next room and to eventually free yourselves from the rooms altogether. Some rooms are kind of scary, some are really terrifying. Some rooms are pretty straightforward, others are complicated AF. I honestly LOVE escape rooms. I have done 6 in the last 9 months with a variety of different groups, and escaped from 5 of them. So yeah, I’m like, pretty good. NBD.
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Thankfully Vancouver has jumped on the worldwide escape room phenomenon with robust vigour, with at least 12-15 different escape room businesses in the Lower Mainland. EXIT rooms are known as being the more difficult rooms (the one room I haven’t escaped from was an EXIT brand room), though some rooms have different types of features like live actors or turning the players into parts of the story (my friend Morgan once started an escape room being handcuffed…).
Recently, Lindsay and I did an escape room and escaped with about 50 seconds to spare. Later that night we went to a great bar and had some delicious cocktails, and still wanted to do more escaping. I feel like I could do an escape room every day, I love them. Plus, they’re indoors!!! Who cares about the weather when you’re perfectly dry in a dark room with no windows solving puzzles anyways!
Some of the most popular escape rooms in the city are the EXIT (the really tough ones), LOCKED Canada (tough and with a variety of really scary rooms) and SmartyPantz (with actors as hosts and located right in Gastown).
Do a Vancouver Brewery Tour
There is pretty much nothing that is more Vancouver these days than drinking beer at a brewery. The city has exploded with breweries, so much so that there are multiple neighbourhoods that would consider themselves the brewery district. And when you’re drinking delicious, organic, one of a kind beer in a cozy tasting room, who cares if it’s raining? It could literally be apocalyptic outside and Vancouverites would still be hitting their fave breweries to fill up their growlers.
The original, and still oldest, brewery in Vancouver is Storm Brewing. Located on Commercial just off Hastings, Storm is basically someones garage. It has weird hours and very few places to sit, but that’s not the point of Storm. The point is awesome beer that changes frequently and comes in flavours and brews that you would never expect. The other oddity at Storm is that you don’t actually buy a pint here. You get 6 samples all by donation, the samples are around 4 ounces of beer, and then you fill up your Growler with whatever type of beer you like the best. It’s amazing.
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Nearby if the massive Parallel 49 brewery with a definitive beer cafeteria /frat house vibe, or the Mexican derived Andina’s with near perfect ceviche and banana chips to satisfy the salty. Honestly, there are so many breweries in Vancouver, they need their own blog post, which is something I’m ‘researching’ and will get to you all once I dry out.
But if you don’t have time to plan it all out, there is a Vancouver brewery tour that you can join. There is the Brewery Creek Walking Tour of False Creek that goes to 4 different brew pubs with a couple of food tastings to make sure you don’t die. Alternatively, there is the original tour, the Vancouver 3-Hour Craft Beer Breweries Tour, with visits to the breweries and transportation between them, which definitely works better when it’s raining like we all know that it can.
Pick Your Poison with these YUMMY tours!
Visit the Vancouver Aquarium
Save some bucks and skip the line with these Aquarium tickets!
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Check out the Museum of Vancouver
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There were beautiful carvings, baskets, hats, regalia, tools, and argillite statues along with descriptions of life and lore that surrounds the Haida people. I loved reading the legends, some of which seemed a little iffy, but hey if they were meant to scare kids straight they probably did the job well!Soar High with FlyOver Canada
FlyOver Canada is one of those truly unique things to do in Vancouver that can’t be overstated. It made me so stupidly patriotic I’m a little embarrassed. FlyOver Canada is a simulated flight over the entire country of Canada, starting in the Maritimes and the craggy Atlantic Coastline, through the Canadian shield and the Prairies, into the Arctic and finally through the Rockies and all over British Columbia.
The ‘flight’ is a 4-D experience, where everybody gets strapped into what feels like too intense of a seat. Then, everything goes dark, all of the seats move forward and regardless of where you’re sitting, you will be up close and personal with the massive 3 story screen in front of you. Wind blows through your hair, the scent (and sometimes the mist) of the ocean breezes past, and the seats twist and turn with the aero-acrobatics of the film.
In short, you feel like you’re actually flying over Canada. It’s legit. It makes Canada look like the dreamland of Middle Earth that it is.
FlyOver Canada isn’t what I would call cheap, especially since it only last 25 minutes. That said, it’s a very cool thing to do, and since it’s located right at Canada Place it’s a very easy thing to do in Vancouver from the cruise ship port. It’s also at the very end of the Skytrain line, so super simple to get to via transit. Even f you do have a car, I wouldn’t drive. Take the Skytrain or the bus, because parking is a nightmare in this area, and bonkers expensive!
Get your ticket ahead of time to FlyOver Canada!!
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