Vancouver's mild maritime climate enables springtime to pop as early as late February. More than 37,000 cherry trees herald the advent of spring, blanketing Vancouver's sidewalks and city streets with a profusion of pink blossoms.
Visitors to Vancouver can celebrate the onset of spring with a visit to one of the city's many botanical sanctuaries, including the 55-acre VanDusen Botanical Garden and Chinatown's Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, an urban oasis that was built by 52 master craftsmen from Suzhou, China.
A stroll through the UBC Botanical Garden & Greenheart Canopy Walkway will take you to the Nitobe Memorial Garden, one of the top Japanese gardens outside of Japan.
Vancouver's largest cherry tree, christened "The Great One," is located in the 130-acre Queen Elizabeth Park, which boasts several varieties of cherry trees that bloom throughout early March and late April.
This year's annual Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival runs from April 4 to 30, 2013.
A spring sojourn in Vancouver is made all the more celebratory by the abundance of haute hotels. As host to the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, Vancouver benefited from an increase of new hotels, many of which have earned top spots on some of the world’s most revered travel industry rankings and polls.
For the 2012 edition of Travel + Leisure World’s Best Awards, Vancouver held five of the top ten spots in the "Top City Hotels in Canada" category. Similarly, five Vancouver hotels appeared on the Condé Nast Traveler 2013 Gold List in the category of "World’s Best Places to Stay."
The Vancouver properties included L’Hermitage Hotel, Rosewood Hotel Georgia, Fairmont Pacific Rim, Wedgewood Hotel & Spa, Loden Hotel, Shangri-La Hotel Vancouver, Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver and The Fairmont Waterfront.
Over in Yaletown at OPUS Vancouver, the city's hottest new chefs, Adam Pegg and Lucais Syme, launched a second location of their celebrated restaurant, La Pentola della Quercia. Named "Trendiest Hotel in Canada" in TripAdvisor's 2012 Traveler's Choice Awards, OPUS Vancouver is the only hotel in Canada to offer v2 iPads in every room.
What makes Vancouver hotels so great? Apart from impeccable service and welcoming hospitality, it certainly doesn't hurt that wherever there’s a window in a Vancouver hotel, visitors are all but assured of a jaw-dropping vista.
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