VANCOUVER, B.C. - Five guys came zipping toward me as I plodded around Stanley Park on a Sunday morning jog. They were built like gazelles - sleek and without a spare ounce of flesh - and they ran like them, too. Silent, serious and very, very fast.

The men were the leaders in a half-marathon running race, dashing along at a blistering pace. Soon dozens, then hundreds, more runners came surging around me, a swirl of fluorescent shoes and shorts that filled the Stanley Park seawall path.

I didn't try to run against the stream. Instead I hopped down the waist-high seawall to the beach, sat on some driftwood and turned to watch the natural world that is so much a part of this city. A heron peered into the waves for fish. Mountains, forests and islands rimmed the bay. A kayaker paddled silently past, just offshore.

Then I turned and looked at the other, urban face of Vancouver just a few blocks away - a forest of gleaming high-rises and cosmopolitan streets that reverberate to dozens of languages and cultures.

Vancouver used to be a reserved, bland city - a place where everything was shut tight on Sundays; where Italian restaurants were considered exotic; and with blue laws that mandated separate entrances at bars for "Gentlemen" and "Ladies with Escorts." But over the past 10 or so years it's turned into a world city.

Waves of immigrants from Europe and Asia have landed on the city's shores. Hong Kong investment now fuels the economy and has touched off a downtown building boom.

The construction never stops; areas on the fringe of downtown that were home to old warehouses or old homes a few years ago have exploded into clusters of gleaming, glassy high-rise condos. Sassy shops, nightclubs and almost every kind of ethnic restaurant imaginable line the downtown streets.

Vancouver's melding of two worlds - wilderness and urban - is what I've always loved about it. It's a big city, but it's easy to escape it, visually and physically.

Look north along almost any city street to Cypress, Grouse and Seymour, the 4,000-foot North Shore mountains that rise steeply out of the suburbs. Beyond them lie thousands more square miles of mountains, forests, lakes and rivers. Only a few towns and roads pierce that natural armor which stretches north all along the British Columbia coast and merges into the wilds of the Yukon and Alaska.

I've always found that sense of nearby wilderness very comforting. When I moved to Vancouver in the late 1970s after living for years in London, England, the wilderness was a big part of what lured me there.

London sprawled endlessly; from the city center it could take two hours of fighting traffic to get the first glimpse of real countryside. But from downtown Vancouver, the forests of the North Shore mountains are just a half-hour drive away. Over the years, I've hiked their trails (and had close encounters with everything from squirrels to black bears), snacked my way through blueberry patches, and skied the cross-country trails and downhill slopes.

Without even leaving the city, Stanley Park, with its thousand acres of forest and beach, gives a taste of wilderness. The six-mile seawall walk rings the park (it's paved and divided into walking and biking sections). Dirt paths wind through the forest, and lead to Beaver Lake in the center of the park, a little oasis of lily pads and dabbling ducks. There are city-type pleasures too, in the park: several good restaurants; tennis courts; an excellent aquarium.

Yet Vancouver has some serious, purely urban pleasures, too. For me, one of the best is Granville Island, a kaleidoscope of shops, restaurants, walkways and a farmer's market all crammed onto a pseudo-island (it's linked by a causeway) that sits under Granville Bridge. And there's plenty more: Robson Street is dotted with trendy boutiques and restaurants, and echoes to the babble of an international clientele in black leather and designer jeans. Chinatown bustles with energy and reasonably priced restaurants and shops that sell everything from live fish to aphrodisiacs.

My strategy to get the best of both the urban and natural faces of Vancouver is to stay in a hotel in the West End, the high-rise residential area between the city's downtown business district and Stanley Park. The West End is a thicket of apartment buildings - some 20 stories tall - in what used to be a neighborhood of big-porched, turn-of-the-century wood houses.

All the people packed into all the high-rises keep the West End lively: Denman Street, which along with Robson Street is one of the most pleasant West End arteries, is lined with shops, restaurants, and delis. (For one eclectic meal we picked up sushi from a Japanese fish shop and pizza from an Italian delicatessen a few doors down). And no matter where you are in the West End, Stanley Park or the beaches of English Bay are at most a 10-minute walk away.

On our recent family visit, we parked our car in the garage of our West End hotel and forgot about it for the next three days. We strolled the streets and Stanley Park and, to my 2 1/2-year-old daughter's delight, rode the dozen-passenger mini-ferries that zip back and forth between the West End and Granville Island.

Yet Vancouver has its urban woes too - plenty of them.

Think the Seattle housing market is over-priced? Within Vancouver's city limits, $175,000 buys only a dumpy little house (condos on the city's West End waterfront easily cost a million dollars).

Vancouver's skid road stretches for depressing block after block along East Hastings Street - cockroach hotels, brutally rough bars, drunkenness and drugs. Unlike Seattle, though, the skid road is well off the path of most visitors on the eastern fringe of downtown.

Potent as Hong Kong investment is, it can't replace the traditional industries and jobs of British Columbia - forestry, fishing and mining - which are in decline. Beyond the glossy downtown facade, there are racial tensions, persistent unemployment, and, like any big city, gangs and crime.

Vancouver's residential neighborhoods have been pockmarked by "Vancouver specials" - boxy, square two-story stucco houses that almost fill the tiny lots. Architecturally offensive, they stick out like sore thumbs in the neighborhoods of older homes (unlike in Seattle, the older homes in Vancouver are often knocked down rather than renovated).

Somehow, though, on a sunny day in Vancouver it's easy to overlook the woes of urban life. After all, the city has one of the most splendid natural settings in the world amid mountains and sea - rivaled perhaps only by Rio de Janeiro and Hong Kong.

Vancouver also has one of the best climates in Canada - a rather sobering thought given its rainy-day tendencies. But then most of the winter virtually all the rest of Canada, except the southwest corner of British Columbia, is locked in snow.

And somehow the city forefathers, in a stroke of genius, created Stanley Park more than 100 years ago. Their political heirs have managed to preserve several dozen more miles of beaches and waterfront paths for public use in Greater Vancouver.

All these parks and paths make great breathing spaces for the city - physically and mentally. And if that's not enough, it's easy to head for the hills. The real wilderness begins just up the road in those mountains.

MORE INFORMATION

-- Getting there:

Allow about three hours to drive from Seattle to Vancouver via Interstate-5 (which merges into Highway 99 in B.C.). The U.S.-Canada border at Blaine can be congested on weekends, so allow an extra half-hour for crossing.

-- Tourist information:

For general information on visiting Vancouver, contact Tourism Vancouver, phone 1-604-683-2000. Or write Tourism Vancouver, Vancouver Travel Info Centre, Waterfront Centre, 200 Burrard St., Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6C 3L6. For hotel information and reservations, phone Tourism Vancouver at 1-800-888-8835.

-- Guidebooks:

- A good all-around guidebook packed with city information is "Vancouver: The Ultimate Guide" by Terri Wershler, Chronicle Books, $11.95. (The updated, fourth edition will be published in May.)

- For detailed hotel (and restaurant) information, I've found "Northwest Best Places" (Sasquatch Books, $16.95) to be one of the most useful guidebooks. "Best Places to Stay in the Pacific Northwest" gives comprehensive reviews of everything from bed-and-breakfasts to family favorites and resorts (Houghton Mifflin, $14.95).

- If you're on a tight budget, "On the Loose in the Pacific Northwest & Alaska," (Fodor's, $14.50) written by Berkeley students, contains plenty of cheap tips. Some are really cheap; such as waiting at the dumpsters at the Granville Island Public Market to get leftover food before it's thrown out.

-- Hotels:

- Two big hotels in the West End that are within a few blocks of Stanley Park are the Westin Bayshore (1-800-228-3000) and the 35-story Coast Plaza (1-800-663-1144). Both can easily top $100 a night for a room, but special promotions - such as the "Discover the Spectacular" off-season promotion which runs through May 31 - bring down the price to about U.S. $75 at the Bayshore, for instance. (Be sure to mention the promotion when booking). Both the Bayshore and particularly the Coast Plaza have some rooms with excellent views: the Bayshore is right on the harbor waterfront next to Stanley Park and the high-rise Coast Plaza has sweeping views over the city and park from high-floor rooms - plus it's right off English Bay and the pleasant bustle of Denman Street.

- For budget accommodations, the University of British Columbia conference center offers one-bedroom suites year-round and campus dorm rooms in the summer. The campus is about a 25-minute drive from downtown, with plenty of diversions right there including the Museum of Anthropology, the Nitobe Japanese garden, and the Spanish Banks beaches within a five-minute drive. Those who like sunbathing in the buff can clamber down the cliffside trail from the campus to Wreck Beach, the city's nude beach. The UBC Aquatic Center, with Olympic-sized outdoor and indoor pools, is also open to the public.

-- Hotels and tax:

Be sure to keep your hotel receipt and claim back the 7 percent GST (Goods and Services Tax) that is added onto hotel bills and many other purchases. Americans can get a refund of the tax by mail or at duty-free shops, including the Heritage Duty Free Shop, on Highway 99 right by the Blaine border crossing on the Canadian side (144 Highway 99, phone 1-604-536-7040). Claim forms are available at the store: you need to bring the original receipt.

-- Restaurants:

I've always had good meals in Chinatown (centered around Pender and Main streets on the eastern fringe of downtown): the restaurants up on the second floors of the buildings seem to be particularly good and less touristy. You can get a good meal for around $10 - or less - per person. To spend even less, head to one of Chinatown's noodle houses or bakeries.

In the mood to splurge? The Teahouse Restaurant at Ferguson Point, within Stanley Park, is an old favorite of mine. It has a peaceful, conservatory-like setting with views over a grassy lawn to English Bay. Food is mostly Continental in style, with good fresh fish dishes. Figure around $15-20 for a meal. And walk off your meal with a stroll around the seawall. Another good restaurant in the park is The Fish House - which, yes, specializes in fish. It's just inside the park near the Beach Avenue entrance, right by the tennis courts.

At beaches all around Stanley Park, concession stands sell soft drinks, hamburgers and fish and chips - cheap and fun to eat on the beach but pretty heavy on the grease.

Along Denman Street, there are plenty of low-priced coffee-bars and small restaurants (eat-in or take-out). I've sampled Japanese, Italian, Greek and Chinese restaurants along Denman (most are clustered at the south end of the street near English Bay) and I haven't hit a bad one yet.