Whenever I go back home or see people from small towns the comments and questions are always the same. Oh, I couldn’t live in the city, too many people, too much traffic. It’s too noisy. What do you do there, besides shop? Well, the shopping is good and you do get used to the noise and the traffic. I find the busyness invigorating. In an ideal world, with money being no object, I’d live right in downtown Vancouver. I loved, loved, loved the two months we lived there, however we couldn’t have stayed in that tiny apartment. I still get a quiver of excitement every time we head downtown. I recently told someone all the things we did in the city and she said I had listed things that were fairly expensive, like going to Broadway shows at the QE theatre and season tickets to the BC Lions. I didn’t recover quickly enough to list all the things we do that aren’t expensive, but I’ve had time to remedy that. Here are some things we get to do in the city:

• Car shows, air shows, bike races, fireworks and parades – While everyone east of Hope sees the lower mainland as Vancouver, there are actually different cities down here and every city has its own list of annual activities that happen. This year we’ve learned about more of them. Dale is more aware of the car shows now that he’s a member of a car club. We have a friend who is a pilot and last night we watched a twilight air show in Chilliwack. Last month we walked a block and watched the Poco Grand Prix. It’s part of the BC Superweek of cycling. There are other races in nearby communities. Maybe next year we’ll take in some of them too. A while ago we took the West Coast Express downtown and watched the final night of the Celebration of Light. Doing that made us get Compass Cards, now we can ride on any bus or train. Of course every community has parades, for Victoria Day or Canada Day, and then there’s the granddaddy of all the parades, the Vancouver Pride Parade.
• Farmer’s Markets and Night Markets – Okay, this is technically shopping and I know small towns have them too, but here every community has one so we could go to one several times a week. The Richmond and Surrey Night Markets are huge. They are worth a visit just to see the sights and smell the food!
• Theatres – If you were so inclined, you could see a different production every week down here.  Every city has at least one community theatre association. Tickets range from $10 to $40. The higher end prices are for the professional quality shows like Theatre Under the Stars (TUTS) at the Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park. This year we took a picnic to the park and enjoyed it before the show. Of course, we could also go to professional productions in Vancouver and we’ve done that too. Last Christmas we saw Jim Byrnes in “Bah! Humbug!”, and we have enjoyed Bard on the Beach. Professional theatre tickets can be bought for as little as $10.00, well within everyone’s budget and well worth the price.
• Museums, parks and other attractions – There are 37 museums in the greater Vancouver region. You can see heritage houses, art, maritime artifacts, BC sports heroes – you name it there’s probably a museum for it somewhere down here. Every community has a parks and recreation department with all activities listed. You could take art lessons or go for a swim. Libraries offer activities too. And of course, there’s the aquarium and the zoo and Science World. Many of the attractions offer seasonal activities, like Easter egg hunts, haunted houses and Christmas trains.
• Festivals – Tourism Vancouver lists all the festivals being held in the city. HelloBC lists festivals and events in Vancouver, Coast and Mountains. There’s more than enough to keep you busy all year round listed in those sites.
• Scenic drives – Dale loves to drive. We often just head somewhere to see what we can find. If nothing else, we discover great little cafes for lunch. We can be on an ocean beach in less than an hour, or on the top of a mountain. We can drive along a river or through a park forest. We’ve got it all within driving distance.

I just googled “free things to do in Vancouver”. The first hit listed things like going to Granville Island or walking the sea wall. The second hit said the lists of free things to do in Vancouver are boring, and it listed things like testing events at liquor stores and board game nights at comic book stores. There are lists of free things to do on rainy days, in the summer, in the winter and free things to do tonight. There are also lists of cheap things to do. Want to learn how to salsa dance? Take a hike? Play frisbee golf? See an outdoor movie? Listen to jazz? I could go on and on. And it’s all free. And if you take public transit you don’t have to pay for parking and there’s an app (or a website) to tell you which bus and/or trains to take. Just put in where you’re leaving from, where you’re going and when you’d like to arrive, and options pop up, and the information is free!

Not everything here has to be an event, a festival, a celebration. There are simple pleasures too. If you want to garden, you can still do that here. I’ve seen amazing deck and balcony gardens, even in downtown Vancouver. You can grow almost anything in containers. And if you want more room to garden, there are community gardens all over. I don’t know how you’d get a space in one, but I bet you can quickly find out online. Kids here in Poco can still walk down to the creek (it’s actually the Coquitlam River but this time of year it’s more like a creek) with their air mattresses and tubes and float away the day. There are places to go fishing, parks where you can sit under a tree and read a book, farms where you can pick berries or apples and then come home and make jam or pies.

Living here gives me the best of all worlds, all I have to do is decide what I want to do today. Or I could just sit here on my couch listening to the live music from the Poco car show. The windows are open to catch the breeze and the band is doing a great cover of Have You Ever Seen the Rain by CCR. Oh, and malls are still open if I want to go shopping.