It’s free, fun and ridiculously simple: just plug in a starting address at citytours.googlelabs.com, select your dates and bingo–you’ve got the first draft of your tour complete with highlighted destinations, recommended length of stay at each site, and time to complete the walk.

A few more clicks and you can amend the tour to include–or remove–particular sites.

Prefer food to fashion? Music to museums? No problem. Just enter your preferred choices–or click on the options provided–and your tour is instantly updated. Import the map to your handheld and off you go!

I test-drove the service by entering starting addresses in cities I know well and was impressed with many of Google’s suggested itineraries.

Still, it’s not perfect yet: I concur with some of the criticisms in this Jetpacker post, especially the point that some of the walks seem unreasonably long.

It’ll never take the place of personal tours like the ones offered by TourGuys, of course. But with a bit more tweaking (imagine if Google included the transit information it already has with the tour itineraries?) it could do a real number on printed guidebooks…

Have you ever used Google to plan a walking tour? Do you plan to? Can you recommend it? Any tips or tricks?

With these sorts of crowds, public transit is the only way to get around the roads during the 2010 Winter Games.

I just did a post about Vancouver’s “Top 5 public transit sight-seeing tours” over at InsideVancouver.ca.  Check it out and add your own route recommendations!

Starting Tuesday, Nov. 17 (and not Nov. 2 as previously reported), Captain Ihab Shaker will start shuttling locals and visitors across Burrard Inlet between Ambleside and Coal Harbour aboard the Coastal Runner.

The ferry–affectionately dubbed the “Silver Sausage” by Bowen commuters–will leave for Vancouver from the foot of 14th St. in West Vancouver at 7:30, 8, 8:30 am and 4:45 pm, and will return from the dock at the foot of Thurlow (near the new convention centre) at 7:45 and 8:15 am, and 4:30 and 5 pm. (You can find the schedule here.)

The short trip will cost $5 one-way and $9 return. A monthly pass will go for $150–competitive with a transit pass.

Serene and scenic, it’s a quick and inexpensive way for visitors to expand their sight-seeing range on a short trip to Vancouver.

There are a bunch of excellent shops and restaurants along Marine Drive in West Vancouver between 14th and 17th, and the seawall walk offers a completely different perspective on the city.

As Shaker says: “I’m not introducing something new. This was the way people traveled to the North Shore in the past. In fact, the dock I will be using in Ambleside was originally built for a ferry that ran to Gastown. The ferry terminal building was actually built in the early 1900s and is is now a gallery and museum.”

Makes a great day-trip…

Between 5 and 6 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, all the delicious small plates are half-off.

The offerings change from week to week, but highlights from a recent menu included:

• Salt Spring Island lemon goat’s cheese crostini with Meyer lemon chutney : $6
• Dungeness Crab Spring Rolls with sweet chili sauce: $8
• Sesame seared Albacore tuna with local Asian greens: $9
• Red thai curry Salt Spring Island mussels: $8
• Truffle and parmesan fries with truffle mayonnaise: $5.5
• Pancetta-wrapped scallops with orange vinagrette: $9

Do the math: at 50% off, that’s just $22.75 for a full-on feast. (And adding on spirits won’t break the bank either: the simple, well-chosen wine list ranges from $28 to $50.)

The locals are already wise to this–the choice tables with a view of Howe Sound are gone by 5–but it’s a big place and there’s plenty of room indoors and out. So grab some friends, hop the Bowen Island Express from Granville Island or the Coastal Link Ferries from Coal Harbour, and live large on a small budget.

In our particular mother-daughter dynamic, quality time definitely trumps quantity time. A Mother’s Day brunch, for example, is much too brief, but a week-long Alaska cruise–well, that just might be asking for trouble.

What to do? How to bond with mom–or for that matter your teenage son or your aging gran–without having to book extra vacation time (or extra sessions with your therapist)?

Easy: take a short trip to anywhere–by train.

There’s something about that slow steady rhythm. About not having to remove your shoes, watch, belt and earrings before you board. About leg room and decent food and an ever-changing landscape outside the window. Spend a day on a train and you’ll feel like you’ve been away for a long weekend.

Depending on where you live in Canada, there are a couple of short, scenic day-trips worthy of the woman who raised you:

• The Whistler Mountaineer runs between Vancouver and Whistler, BC  and is the mini-version of the luxurious Rocky Mountaineer between Vancouver and Calgary, AB. You can easily do the round-trip journey (train one way, bus the other) in a day. There’s something to be said about feasting on chocolate eclairs while simultaneously gorging on epic scenery…
• On Vancouver Island, the 4.5-hour VIA Rail run from Victoria to Courtenay is cheap (less than $30 one way) and pretty–and you can hop on and off for a spot of tea and shopping at Chemainus, Nanaimo, Parksville or Qualicum Beach. 
• In eastern Canada, the VIA Spa Train stops all along the Quebec City-Windsor corridor. Plan a short escape to a nearby spa town–there are 15 en route–where local spa staff will meet your train and whisk you away to their property for treatment and then put you back on the train in time for dinner.

Win a return trip for two on the Whistler Mountaineer!

Leave a comment here about who you’d like to spend some quality time with on board the Whistler Mountaineer. I’ll do a random draw for a return trip for two between Vancouver and Whistler at noon on Friday, May 8–just in time for Mother’s Day (but you can take the trip anytime that works for you).

And if you’re on Twitter and you tweet this contest (use @theseboots in your post), you’ll get a second entry!

Update May 7: Congrats to draw winner Fiona Beaty of Bowen Island, BC who is looking forward to taking her nine-year-old godson on the train!

Highly recommended day-trips:

You can’t let the wet stuff dampen your holiday spirit. Just grab the Gore-Tex and a sturdy brolly (the cheerful, wind-resistant offerings from Vancouver’s Cheeky Umbrellas are well worth the bucks) and make like a local with some of these recommended rainy-day pastimes:

Vancouver loves a Cheeky Umbrella

• Visit Hong Kong without a passport on a trip to Richmond’s Aberdeen Centre, where the city’s sizeable Asian population comes to shop, eat and be entertained. 
• Cloudy skies only heighten the moody atmosphere of the Museum of Anthropology, a celebrated repository of Northwest Coast Aboriginal art at the University of British Columbia. 
• Look up when it’s coming down: head for the snow on the nearby North Shore mountains. Look for specially priced ski-and-snowshoe packages here.
• Steamy and tropical, the domed Bloedel Conservatory in Queen Elizabeth Park blooms with birds, butterflies and lush floral vistas. (It’s the best place for foolproof photos, too.) 
• Indulge your inner culture-vulture at Tickets Tonight with last-minute, half-price tickets to Vancouver’s primo arts events and wait out the monsoon in a matinée.
• Rain or shine, the Whistler Mountaineer train between North Vancouver and Whistler is the best way to take in the coastal scenery along the Sea-to-Sky corridor. (The season runs May to October.)
• Drop your umbrella and your shoulders and say spaaaaaaah. My favourite sanctuary is still (and will likely ever be) the Absolute Spa chain, now with a new location at Park Royal in West Vancouver. 
• When you’ve exhausted the indoor pleasures of Granville Island Public Market, pop your top and walk the False Creek seawall west to Kitsilano Beach or east to Science World.
• Like hockey but can’t afford tickets to a game? Head downtown to Vancity Theatre for the Hockey Nights in Film series during spring break.

Where do you like to pass a rainy day in the Lower Mainland? Please share your suggestions!

nerdseyeview @julieoc richmond is the kinda town you want a local to drag you around. it’s not easy to know what to do/where to go, but it could be fun.

And she’s right of course. It’s easy to forget that Richmond, BC —land of mini-malls and big-box stores—is an island, with an island’s watery charms. I grew up there, so I say this with some authority. Descending into Vancouver International Airport, you stare down on Richmond’s hard, grey, flat expanse of roadways and rooftops and retail. But look to the edge of the frame, to the soft-ripened spot where the dyke holds back the mighty Fraser River: now that’s a place you ought to get to know—especially in springtime.

Richmond is below sea level and the 80-km dyke that rings the island is one of the city’s best features—and not merely as a safety measure. It’s at once a backyard fitness track for locals, a rich habitat for migratory birds, and a quiet refuge for the world-weary (except, I guess, for two weeks in 2010, when the new riverside Olympic speed-skating oval will be a little busy).

Walk (or bike) it in the spring, when warmer weather wakes up the critters that call the marshland home. Start at Steveston village, where the annual farmers’ and artisans’ market gets underway in the parking lot of the historic Gulf of Georgia cannery every Sunday starting in late May until September. Grab a cone of fish and chips from Dave’s or Pajo’s, and then settle down at nearby Garry Point Park to catch the serendipitous photo-op of the day: Japanese box-kites slashing through the sky, or colourful fishing boats sauntering home for supper, or wizened old ladies practicing Tai Chi on the beach.

Stay long enough and you might even catch an epic sunset—a not-quickly-forgotten magenta stain in the sky over the distant Gulf Islands. And if you’ve worked up an appetite, remember: there’s a glut of award-winning Chinese restaurants just a few miles down the road…

Quick fix: Dine Out Vancouver, Tourism Vancouver’s annual winter gift to the locals for being nice to out-of-towners the rest of the year.

This is a sweet deal, my friends: between Jan. 14 and Feb. 1, you can treat yourself to a three-course dinner at more than 180 of the city’s best restaurants for just $18, $28 or $38 per person. Scope out the menus at the web site today and don’t wait to claim your table: the most popular eateries book up quickly and early reservations are pretty much mandatory.

If you want the full tourist-in-your-own-town experience–and let’s not ever underestimate the therapeutic properties of sleeping under 400-thread-count sheets in a bed that’s actually been made–then take advantage of the hotel packages also on offer: as little as $150 gets you a night in the Big Smoke with dinner for two.

This year I’m tempted by the menus at the one-syllable eateries: Zin, YEW, Cru and Brix. But Provence’s lemon curd and lavender tart also has my attention…