According to the urban dictionary, a Staycation is:
A vacation that is spent at one's home enjoying all that the home and one's home environs have to offer.
For the purpose of this blog, the label staycation shall refer to utilizing one’s own home as a hotel while touring all the surrounding areas via any transportation means available. So if you return to your home-hotel for the night, just as you would return to your hotel while on vacation, then that qualifies the Travel in question, as a staycation.
Also used in this blog is the Travel label Road Trip. The urban dictionary defines a road trip as:
When a bunch of kids get in a car (most likely a VW Bus, most likely with tons of drugs), and drive to an exotic destination (like Vegas or New Jersey). It happened more in the 70s. As in “Dude, let's go to Vegas! Hell yeah! Road Trip!!”
While this does sound like fun, in this blog the term Road Trip will refer to any Travel that is ‘local’ enough that it can be accomplished without leaving the ground in an airplane. Hence the term, ROAD-trip. It also requires staying away from home for one or more nights, otherwise the Travel in question would be considered a staycation.
Since I live in Vancouver I will focus mainly on staycations and roadtrips to places which are relevant to Vancouverites. Here is one such idea for a staycation daytrip near Vancouver, BC:
Take transit or arrive early and park at Granville Island for the day. This fantastic waterside shopping area, replete with Public Market, was originally built on what was thought to be undesirable land for the purpose of providing walk-to shopping for some of the city’s less-than-privileged set. Since then, Granville Island has garnered such a loyal mass of regular patrons and daily visitors that it has become one of the most sought-after areas of real estate and tourism in all of Greater Vancouver. And it’s no wonder when you consider how much there is to do and see (not to mention eat) once you're there.
Granville Island is an ideal base for a staycation daytrip because after experiencing all the Island & Market have to offer, you can easily hop on an Aquabus (a fleet of small, privately operated ferry boats) and visit several other destination spots in an around False Creek such as:
- Downtown Vancouver
- Yaletown & Davie St
- The Edgewater Casino
- Science World
- Stamp’s Landing to visit Monk McQueen’s Fresh Seafood & Oyster Bar.
Another boon to being at Granville Island is that there are several types of rental boats available at places like:
- Granville Island Boat Rentals
- Granville Island Marine
- Blue Pacific Yacht Charters
- Jerry’s Boat Rentals.
My personal favourite watercraft rental option is a small speedboat, fraught with fun and excitement. After a quick basics-of-boating lesson, you and your group can, (for a reasonable fee and with a credit card deposit and valid driver’s licence of course ;-) ) set sail with the yummy drinks and foodstuffs which you of course, purchased earlier at the Market. Once you get past the safety buoy, drop the hammer, go under the Lion’s Gate Bridge, head east up Indian Arm, and in less than an hour you can Travel all the way to Port Moody. You could also choose to head north and duck into beautiful Deep Cove in North Vancouver or, if a wild, high-speed ride is more your style, you could choose to speed across the open waters of The Strait of Georgia towards West Vancouver. Any way you play it, a Travel daytrip spent at Granville Island is sure way to save your soul!
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