7 of the best indoor activities that keep the winter blues away, from an experienced local
Find out how locals actually survive winter here...
49th Parallel Donut. Right: Making the rain cute.
Winter in Vancouver hits in a particularly miserable way. To survive, you simply must find (actually fun) indoor things to do in Vancouver.
Every year, I tell myself this will be the season I embrace it. I'll romanticize the rain. I'll do all the obvious things: become an avid reader, drink lots of tea, always light a candle, take yoga classes, make sourdough, do puzzles, and finally, attempt to finish all the Lord of the Rings movies (they're just so long).
But try as I might, once November rolls around and the sky becomes a two-dimensional sheet of dark grey, these cozy intentions quickly fall apart, only to be replaced with the far more insidious doom-scroll/seasonal affective disorder/neck pain combination.
Having survived 20-odd Vancouver winters, I've learned one thing for certain: you cannot simply sit inside and hope the season passes quickly. It never does. Luckily, through a fair amount of trial and error, I've found a few ways to cope.
Here are seven indoor activities in Vancouver that, if only for a day, keep the Pacific Northwest winter blues at bay.
Escape in a 360° immersive show
Starting off weird, but in my opinion, strong: the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre. Inside the planetarium dome, they run immersive visual shows that combine massive 360° projections, lasers, and surround sound.
It's sensory overload and full-body escapism in the best way. I recommend the 50th anniversary presentation of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (but maybe I only say that because, spiritually, I seem to be aligned with a suburban dad in his 40s). I also recently saw that there's a Pedro Pascal: Encounters in the Milky Way show as well. Feels like you can't go wrong with either.
For a gorgeous hour, you will completely forget that it's raining sideways outside.
Embrace the hot-cold spa
We need to accept the inevitable: if it's winter in Vancouver, you're going to be wet, and you're going to be cold. You might as well lean in.
Vancouver has embraced the Nordic spa trend in a big way, and these spots are taking over the city for good reason. Cold plunging, sauna-ing, relaxing, tea-drinking, and/or kombucha-ing not only induces a slight superiority complex but also offers an honest-to-goodness nervous system reboot — a momentary jolt out of your existential, gloomy weather mood.
As an addendum to this category of seasonal self-care: a head spa treatment. Look into it. Thank me later.
Make your own candle
Nothing says "adorable", "cozy", and "winter" quite like a candle-making workshop.
Spend a few blissful hours mixing scents and creating your own custom candle. If you suffer from choice paralysis, prepare yourself, there are a lot of scents. A few local spots to try: Wicks & Wax, Ollie and Co, Nageen's Candle Land, Homecoming Candles, and Me Time Aesthetics.
At some classes you'll get to design your own label (so cute), which makes the finished candle unbearably perfect as a gift for someone with a winter birthday. Two birds, one gorgeously fragrant stone...
Paint ceramics
This one is a little less radical, but it feels nostalgic and practical.
Ceramic painting is an inexpensive, truly delightful way to spend a rainy afternoon. Typically, you only pay for the ceramic piece you choose and get a few hours to paint it however you want.
A few cute Vancouver spots to try: Café au Clay Pottery, 4Cats Arts Studio, U Paint I Fire, and Bella Ceramica.
My recommendation is to paint a very large soup mug. Which brings me to my next activity...
Make soup!
The quintessential cold-weather activity that offers far more variety and dimension than baking yet another banana bread. Extra points if you make this an ongoing thing — work your way through a different soup recipe each week and hand out leftovers to friends or family — you'll be the Mother Theresa of winter!
For my Enneagram Type 5's (The Thinkers), this is also a deeply pragmatic way to meal prep. Put on music, light the candle you made earlier, and eat it out of the enormous mug you painted.
Go to a Warriors game
Vancouver is not necessarily famous for its lacrosse scene (I don't know if any place is famous for this, to be honest); however, a scene exists nonetheless.
Tickets start at only $29, and it's a more unexpected outing than going to a movie.
Book a vacation (my personal favourite)
My tried-and-true winter survival strategy. I do this religiously every year, including the years my financial advisor says I absolutely shouldn't.
I'll curl up with a cup of tea, watch a million travel vlogs, open approximately 17 browser tabs, and start sending flight links to my equally seasonally depressed friends or partner until someone caves and agrees to go with (they always do).
Half the joy is planning it. The other half is knowing that, at some point in the near future, you will be somewhere that isn't here in the wintertime.
Sometimes all we can do is look forward to a plane ticket, a change of scenery, and the radical concept of sunlight after 5:00 p.m.
Winter in Vancouver may be long, grey, and horrible — but with the right distractions, it's survivable. And when all else fails, there's always the airport.
The views expressed in this Opinion article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Narcity Media.