Vancouver Island and the Pacific Coast

Your driver meets you at Vancouver International Airport and transfers you into the city. Check in to the Rosewood Hotel Georgia, the city’s finest address on West Georgia Street, where the 1927 building has been restored without losing any of its original character.

Two nights here are about arriving well rather than covering the city. Dinner at one of Vancouver’s serious restaurants the first evening. The second day at your own pace, Stanley Park, Granville Island, and the seawall, before the ferry south to Victoria the following morning.

A private car north along the island’s east coast, crossing to the west side through Cathedral Grove, where ancient Douglas firs up to 800 years old line the road and demand the kind of silence that large trees tend to produce.

Check in to Clayoquot Wilderness Resort or Wickaninnish Inn, two properties that approach the Pacific rainforest from entirely different angles. Clayoquot is remote, tented, and accessed by floatplane or boat. Wickaninnish sits on the rocks above Chesterman Beach with the full force of the open Pacific in front of it.

Four nights here is the right amount of time. Long enough for a whale watching excursion, a morning of surfing or sea kayaking, a guided rainforest walk with a naturalist who knows what to look for, and at least one afternoon where nothing is planned and the beach is enough.