I was going to post, like, a solid half of my "things to see in Vancouver" list, but I edited it way down, so:

This is adapted from my list of things to show friends when they visit, but is not the whole list. I have also omitted any venues that are currently closed.

TRIUMF

The inside of a cyclotron. Lots of metal equipment on the "floor" and "ceiling".
It's a particle accelerator… …which they sometimes do guided tours at! They both use the main cyclotron here for scientific research and producing radioisotopes for medical purposes. If you want to see a huge contraption that speeds particles up to a considerable fraction of the speed of light (or, at least, the concrete blocks they shield it with), this is the place!

Railway Museum of British Columbia

An old steam locomotive of a somewhat streamlined design.
They've got a bunch of old rolling stock that used to operate in mainline service in BC here. If you like vintage trains, this is a good place to see them.

The Museum of Vancouver and the H.R. MacMillan Space Centre

A museum that looks a bit like a flying saucer. There's a metal sculpture of a crab in the middle of the photo.
They're both in the same building! One's a museum that's mostly about the history of Vancouver, and the other is a space museum kind of thing with a planetarium. The latter is definitely more aimed at younger guests, but it's right next to the MOV, so you wouldn't need to go out of your way to see it!

Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh L̓il̓wat7úl Cultural Centre

A largely wooden modern building, with a canoe of a Coast Salish design in the middle.
I haven't been here yet, but if you find yourself up in Whistler (which is about a 1½ hour drive or ≥2 hour coach bus ride north of Vancouver), you can check out exhibits and cultural programs put together by the two Indigenous nations whose land Whistler is on.

The Law Courts (near the Art Gallery)

A massive glass-canopied atrium over a brutalist courthouse with vines growing off of each floor.
I can't really say "near Robson Square", because "Robson Square" specifically refers to the British Columbia Provincial Court location in the complex. The Supreme and Appeal courts are just called "Vancouver". But basically, it's an architecturally impressive space, designed by Arthur Erickson, and it's also great for the world's nerdiest people-watching possible: sitting in on court and chambers. Check the daily court lists to see if anything looks interesting!

Wreck Beach

A beach with tons of large logs on it, with a view out into the ocean.
If you're looking for a nude beach where people will try to sell you shrooms, this is the place. It's a non-trivial walk down/up a hill to get to it, though!

Stanley Park

An aerial view of a park full of coniferous trees, with an incredibly dense city centre immediately behind it.
It's a big bloody park within walking distance of the SkyTrain. Like, it's larger than the two smallest countries on the planet put together. …which isn't saying a lot, but it's huge, full of big coniferous trees, has a ton of really nice paths through it, and also has part of the Seawall! Depending on which side of it you're on, it has fantastic views out east down Burrard Inlet, up toward the North Shore, west toward Vancouver Island, and south toward the West Side.

Simon Fraser University's Burnaby campus

A sprawling brutalist university complex.
Another massive, imposing public space designed by Arthur Erickson. It's worth checking out for the architecture, if you feel like going a bit out of the way. The views from Burnaby Mountain over much of the rest of Metro Vancouver are also impressive, even if in a different way from the southward view from the various North Shore mountains.

The Lions Gate Bridge

A strikingly green suspension bridge connecting a forest to a hilly suburb.
As far as "large" bridges go, it's pretty small (three lanes wide and 1.8km long), but it's very close to Downtown, and it looks striking, both at day and at night.

Basically every station on the Expo and Millennium Lines in East Vancouver and Burnaby

There's just so much variety in the architecture on these. Particularly notable ones:

Main Street-Science World: it's a bit of an oddball station in the sense that it was the first one completed on the network, by a margin of about two years, and it was also the first to receive a serious renovation, also by about that much (unless you count the changes made to the Expo Line portion of Commercial-Broadway to accommodate the Millennium Line platforms far below it in 2000-ish).
Commercial-Broadway: it's one of the most extensively renovated Expo Line stations, having a Spanish Solution platform configuration for westbound trains (unlike any other station on the network), and, yeah. It's a fascinating jumble of '80s, '00s, and late '10s architecture, and it also has an interesting topology, what with the Expo Line platforms being tens of metres above and about a block away from the (also elevated, but relative to the Grandview Cut, which is basically a small artificial valley) Millennium Line platforms.
Joyce-Collingwood: an extensively renovated Expo Line station. It's weird (affectionate).
Metrotown: one of the most visually impressive Expo Line stations. It also received a massive renovation, turning it from just a fairly tall station to an almost monumental structure compared to the 80-metre island platform that lies at its centre. Even just the escalators are impressive.
Royal Oak and 22nd Street: both of these are stations that retain basically exactly their original designs to this day, meaning they look shockingly similar to some Vienna U-Bahn stations which were built in the '80s. (This is due to all the old Expo Line stations having been designed by an architecture firm which did extensive work on the Vienna U-Bahn.)
Renfrew: one of many good examples of the zaniness that came about form hiring a different architecture firm to design each of the original Millennium Line stations.
Brentwood Town Centre: it both looks like a bit of a flying saucer and exemplifies the widespread use of wood in station designs from the Millennium Line onward. So, so much wood, concrete, metal, and glass in this station.
Lougheed Town Centre: another station which got an interesting modification with the opening of the Evergreen Extension: a separate side platform just for westbound Millennium Line trains. The roof over the Expo Line/eastbound Millennium Line platform is also fascinating, IMO.

Chinatown

A traditional Chinese-style gate stretching across a street. There are brick buildings of a late 19th/early 20th Century style behind it.
It's Vancouver's historic Chinatown. There's a decent number of historic sites, lots of good food from a range of Chinese cuisines, architecture of a sort that isn't common in the rest of the city, and also interesting stores around here!

Granville Island

A market neighbourhood, with all the shops in old industrial buildings.
It's absolutely a tourist trap, but it's also in a really pretty location, and the stores around here are pretty unique. Check out the Granville Island Market for a pretty good public market with a heck of a lot of local food.

The West End (including Davie Village)

An urban street with four rainbow crosswalks around one intersection.
A neighbourhood notable for densifying much earlier than a lot of the rest of even the City of Vancouver, and thus a huge assortment of '60s concrete apartment and condo buildings, and also Davie Village, which is the one serious gaybourhood in Metro Vancouver. There's gay bars and gay clubs here! And bathhouses! Also check out Little Sister's, which is a book store that also sells lots of extremely queer clothing and a vast array of sex toys.

Lonsdale

A public market right on the seaside, with apartment towers and tall mountains in the background.
Coming from anywhere but the North Shore, this is the most accessible neighbourhood on the North Shore, and it's kinda cool, honestly? There's a wide range of interesting semi-public spaces down by Lonsdale Quay (including the market at the Quay itself), and as you head up Lonsdale Avenue, you'll get to see an impressive variety of Persian stores and restaurants. You can also take buses from here to basically everywhere in North Vancouver.

Steveston

A twee little shopping district on a boardwalk.
A kinda touristy neighbourhood in the far southwest corner of Richmond. It still is a major location for the fishing industry in Metro Vancouver, so the combination of historical and current fishery activity gives the neighbourhood a lot of its character.

The British Properties, the waterfront between Kitsilano and UBC, and Shaughnessy

A horrific, gaudy mansion with a shittily pasted in Rolls-Royce SUV in the driveway. The real estate agent who posted this monstrosity applied filters to it to make it look an order of magnitude uglier than it probably is in real life.
Yes, these neighbourhoods are somewhat of a distance from each other, but they all have one thing in common: so many mansions. I think the most enraging, least tasteful ones are in the BPs, but they're all a hell of a lot of Architecture™ thrown at the most wasteful uses possible.

Downtown Richmond

A shopping mall with tons of red lanterns as decoration.
If you're looking for a larger, more "it's kinda like any US suburb's 'downtown'" neighbourhood with more variety as far as Chinese food and shops goes, Downtown Richmond is impressive. I've at least heard that basically every major regional cuisine from China is represented here. It isn't as walkable as Chinatown, though, even if it is accessible via the Canada Line.

Fort Langley

Old-timey storefronts.
It's one of the most… …actively historical, kinda anachronistic neighbourhoods in the city. It's pretty far out of the way, but if you like old-timey 19th Century West Coast tourist bait, it's worth checking out?

Whistler Village

A shopping district in the middle of a ski resort town, framed by two very tall mountains with visible skilifts on them.
If you're up in Whistler, you need to visit Whistler Village. It's where basically everything relevant is, and it's also… interesting. It's the Platonic ideal of an Alpine European town centre aimed at the sensibilities of Washingtonian, Californian, and New Yorker tourists, as imagined by a committee of out-of-touch resort development executives and local political leaders who were playing the long game to prepare the Lower Mainland for an Olympics bid in the early '80s. It's also legitimately one of the most walkable town centres out there, what with nearly all storefronts facing pedestrian-only streets that are wider than many city streets which are built for cars elsewhere.

Commercial Drive

A crowd of people on a street that's been temporarily closed to cars.
Little Italy. They've got Italian pride crosswalks here! So many pizzerias! New Age woo shops, cool restaurants in general, some of the most "counterculture"-ish shops in the whole city (including a communist bookstore, an anarchist bookstore, and at least one feminist sex shop), and lots of nice little parks around here.

Horseshoe Bay

A view of tree-covered mountains and a marina.
If you're going up to Squamish/Whistler/further afield, or taking the ferry to Nanaimo, Bowen Island, or the Sunshine Coast, take a look at Horseshoe Bay! It's got pretty views up to the north, there's some nice boat-watching to do, and the food here is… …it's got the right vibes for a seaside neighbourhood anchored (ahaha) by a major ferry terminal.

Tracing old interurban routes

A two-car interurban train stopped in front of a station with a corner store in it.
While much of the old BCER network's alignments are now directly used by the SkyTrain, even more of their old alignments are not in transit use. Some of them are, these days, merely odd diagonal scars cut through the city's grid. Others, like the Southern Railway, are active freight routes to this day. (Hard mode: try to find the old streetcar routes, too. Those, thanks to the fact they mostly followed the street grid, are even harder to track down, in some cases.)

Do You Notice How There's A Sandman Hotel, Specifically, Right Beside Every Freeway, Even The Aborted Freeway Projects

A concrete hotel of a very '60s design in front of a large stadium.
I think it's just really fascinating how the hotel chain owned by the Gaglardi family managed to, in the '60s and '70s, set up hotels right next to every place that Phil Gaglardi, Minister of Highways from 1952 to 1972, was planning on constructing a highway. :)

Richmond Night Market

A massive night market.
This is only open on summer weekends, but it's an almost unparalleled place to try out food truck and street-style food. So, so much variety. Also, the stores here are sometimes interesting, even if a lot of it is cheap, tacky accessories, dubious charging cords, and extremely shopping mall knives and swords.

Robson Street

A street lined with shops, lights, and parked cars.
One of the main shopping and restaurant streets in Downtown Vancouver. It's a bit long, but that just means it's got space for something for everyone — restaurants from a huge range of cuisines, shops from a similarly large assortment of cultures, and it's not even uniformly expensive or anything. Though much of it is.

Alberni Street (for gawking purposes)

Several hyper-luxury stores along a street.
There was, until recently, a De Beers store here. The restaurants along here are mostly "$$$" and "$$$$". Who the fuck even shops at these stores. Why do they exist. If nothing else, it's right next to Robson Street.

Whyte Lake

A dock poking out into a lake surrounded by coniferous trees.
A very pretty lake in beautiful surroundings, only an hour's hike (with about 270m vertical) from the nearest bus stop.

Grouse Grind

A steep trail with a sign warning hikers that "the remainder of the trail is extremely steep and difficult".
If you want to go on an extremely intense, fairly quick hike, this is a favourite of many fit and outdoorsy (or overconfident) locals. It's a 2.9km hike with 853m of vertical. People have died on the Grouse Grind. Do not attempt it if you haven't recently done a hike this intense.

BCMC

Old, somewhat iffy wooden steps on a steep trail.
It's the Grouse Grind but less brutal, more obscure, and less crowded.

Cypress Falls Park

A waterfall surrounded by tall coniferous trees.
There's quite the range of walks and hikes you can take around here! Everything from nice, gentle walks to serious hikes. The trail network reaching out from here is pretty extensive, too, especially if you're willing to walk some distance on small local streets.

Pacific Spirit Park

A set of stairs along a path through a forest.
Another large, very forested park in the West Side of Vancouver — this time, right next to UBC. The ~vibes~ here are fairly different from Stanley Park, given that it's mostly much more inland, but still, it's a coastal temperate rainforest.

Coliseum Mountain

A partly snow-filled lake amidst the rocky part of a mountain that's close to the tree line.
If you want to do a long hard hike (as opposed to a quick but viciously steep one), Coliseum Mountain is a good hike to take up an entire summer morning and afternoon with.

Mount Garibaldi

A strikingly blue lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
A pleasant though fairly hard hike somewhat north of Squamish. There's a beautiful campground up at the top of this hike, which is a good starting point to attempt…

Black Tusk

A volcanic plug seen from its side, amidst high-altitude trees and meadows.
…climbing Black Tusk. Once you get to the base of the cinder cone, you're basically in un-patrolled territory, and if you want to climb up the actual tusk, you better have nerves of steel and steady hands and feet. The views are absolutely magnificent from even just the bottom of the tusk, but it is dangerous if you don't know what you're doing.

The Baden-Powell Trail

A boardwalk trail through temperate shrubs in a partly deciduous forest.
It winds away across much of the North Shore, and takes you through many different (…though fairly similar) neighbourhoods and landscapes along its length.

The Seawall

A trail along a seawall, framed by coniferous trees on one side and the ocean on the other.
A seaside trail which stretches from Canada Place (right by Waterfront Station), all the way across Coal Harbour, around Stanley Park, all the way around False Creek, and then over to Kitsilano Point. It sorta has a continuation in the sidewalks and bike lanes of Point Grey Road, taking you to all the West Side beaches.

Queen Elizabeth Park

A park full of a huge variety of trees, with a geodesic dome in the background.
The highest point in the City of Vancouver, and also a really nice park, both in terms of the vibes and the views. It's close to the Canada Line.

Beer Island

A tiny island with small trees on it. There are a bunch of new condo towers in the background.
Properly known as Habitat Island, but it's where everyone in and around Olympic Village goes to have Entirely Legal Park Beers. It's also a great spot for watching dragonboat teams training and people sailing pleasure craft.

Trout Lake

A lake surrounded by sandy beaches with logs on them.
A nice little lake right in the middle of East Van, a short walk from Commercial-Broadway station.

Nitobe Garden

A large public garden with an assortment of trees in and around it. There's a large pond in the middle.
A beautiful Japanese garden out at UBC. Even at the height of the school year, it's pretty peaceful and quiet. It has short hours, though, so it's not exactly convenient, particularly given its location.

Sun Yat-Sen Garden

A fancy Chinese garden with ornate architecture.
A Chinese garden right in the middle of Chinatown, a short walk from Stadium-Chinatown station. Also has short-ish hours, but it's pretty centrally located.

@Bigg

The tall man who posts