Vancouver | Central Park | Stanley Park | Opus Hotel

Give us the lay of the land. The layout of Vancouver, I think, is unique to any other North American city. Like Manhattan, it's surrounded by water. But then that water is not surrounded by New Jersey; it's surrounded by mountains. The vistas are incredible. Stanley Park is larger than Central Park in New York. It is central to all of Vancouver. You can literally disappear in Stanley Park in a way that you can't in Central Park, because it's not so wide. If you were in the middle of it, you would think you're in Alaska.­ It's surrounded by the ocean, with bridges on all sides. It's called the Sea Wall - you can actually get a bike or Rollerblades and go around the entire thing. It would take about an hour and a half; it's a huge chunk of land. Downtown is directly connected to it, and the mountains surround all of that.

What is your base in Vancouver? There's something new called the Opus Hotel, which is a fun hotel to go have a drink at, but I haven't stayed in a room there. When we were renovating, we stayed at a really cozy place called the Wedgewood Hotel. They have a beautiful restaurant in the lobby - very cozy. We've had a condo in Kitsilano since '96, which is our little secret hideaway. It's a lot of old, big houses, many of which have been converted into what they call "stratas" - a big house that's been turned into four condos, and they are completely their own landlords. So it's a lot of young people in the neighborhood, a lot of first-time home owners, a lot of great dog-walking streets. Big, old trees. Kitsilano doesn't feel like a suburb in any way; it feels like a part of the city - it's across the bridge from downtown - and with the exception of Broadway and Fourth, it's mostly residential. It's on an angle, almost sort of like San Francisco, so from a lot of places you have great views of the ocean or of downtown. There are a lot of good little cafés - Sophie's, for instance, is in Kitsilano. People tend to really live in their neighborhood.