Have you ever hopped on one of those Big Bus tours of Vancouver, just to see what the tourists see?

The usual suspects are well-represented: Stanley Park, Gastown, Granville Island, English Bay, etc. And they’re all great.

But the bus could run out of gas and still not see everything. There’s too much. It’s too vast. To scope it all, the tourists are going to need our help.

Here’s an idea: What’s your favourite spot in all of Metro? Send it in to Metro and we’ll put together a list that will get the tourists off the beaten track (sorry, Search and Rescue) and even renew our interest in exploring our own Big Back Yard.

To get you started, I’ve nominated my own top five that aren’t on the bus, at least not yet:

5) Lighthouse Park: A slice of old-growth forest nestled in the expensive West Van real estate. Hug an 800-year-old tree, see the lighthouse up close, sun yourself on the rocks like a seal, and get as close to the real ocean – Georgia Strait – as you can get. They don’t make trees like that back in Kansas, Toto.

4) Capilano-Pacific Trail: Travels along the Capilano River from Cleveland Dam to the ocean, from the forest primeval to Park Royal. Weird. Even weirder, it goes right past the Capilano Suspension Bridge compound, so all the tourists watch you go by and wonder how you get there. And it’s free.

3) Spanish Banks: Before he died, I would drive out here with my 90-plus-year-old uncle, after a visit to White Spot, and we’d park and count the number of tankers waiting to get into the harbour and people-watch. I know … but he liked it. Confirmed: people and their dogs do look alike.

2) Beaver Lake: A natural miracle, a 10-minute jog from the epicentre of downtown. On a trail that’s exactly one kilometre around the lake, you can see the aforementioned beaver, plus herons, eagles, ducks, raccoons, ground squirrels, geese and a number of confused German tourists: this is a lake? Well, it’s more like a swamp, but it’s the most picturesque swamp in the world.

1) Edgemont Village: So I live on the North Shore. We all have valuable local knowledge, and I’m here to testify that on a warm sunny day in August, there’s no finer place to be than on the corner of Highland and Edgemont boulevards at an outdoor table with a latté and an iPad. It’s the centre of my universe.

OK, now it’s your turn.