Hyper-Specific City Guide: What to Do in Vancouver With Your Outdoorsy, Bike-Riding Ex (Whom You’re Still Secretly in Love With)

This is part of our Ultimate, Hyper-Specific Vancouver City Guide, featured in the May 2024 issue of Vancouver magazine. We’ve created 25 unique personas and 25 unique itineraries to match. If this to-do list for ‘your outdoorsy ex’ isn’t helpful, perhaps one of the other 24 bespoke schedules will be. Explore them all here. 

4:00 p.m.: Get in Line

A bike ride doesn’t provide many opportunities for eye contact, but a casual post-work weekday cycle to Rain or Shine in Kits will yield some ideal one-on-one time (because there’s going to be a queue). Try some thinly veiled conversation about commitment and monogamy (Are you still a one-flavour kind of person? Do you like your bananas split?) while waiting. Order the strangest flavour available (cones from $5, in seasonal options like Miso Dulcey Chocolate) so they know you’re adventurous and spontaneous and would never religiously follow a step-by-step get-your-ex-back playbook in a magazine. 102–1926 W 4th Ave., rainorshineicecream.com

4:30 p.m.: Ride the Greenway

Take the Arbutus Greenway south. On top of beautiful views (right around West 35th is where you’ll find that classic ocean/city/forest/mountain combo), there’s also the opportunity to show off your excellent bike manners (look how you politely avoided that gaggle of roller-skaters!) and your own butt (make sure you’re leading the way).

6:30 p.m.: Casual Claymaking

This part is optional, but if you can weasel it in, you’re set. Suddenly, you’re going to veer west off the Greenway and say you’d rather take the road less travelled (your ex loves Robert Frost, a quirk you’ve decided to find charming instead of pretentious). You’ll end up at Dunbar’s 4Cats Art Studio, where clay wheel classes are offered most weekdays at 6:30. How crazy would it be if you took a class ($44 each) and how random would it be if you shared a wheel ($20 extra)? 4305 Dunbar St., 4catsdunbar.com

8:00 p.m.: Pizza Their Heart

All that romantic ceramic action has your stomach and loins growling (but you can deal with the latter later).
Now, you’ll ride on back to the Greenway and get a table at Bufala, where you’ll share a spicy-sweet pepperoni and honey pizza ($25) and lady-and-the-tramp your way through a plate of spaghetti ($26). Cheers with a glass of Covert Farms Bufala Red ($65/bottle) to your next two dates—after all, you have to glaze those bowls seven days from now, and pick them up from the kiln 10 days after that. Same time next week? 5395 West Blvd., bufala.ca

More from the Ultimate, Hyper-Specific Vancouver City Guide here.