When you arrive at Vancouver International Airport by air, you are greeted by waterfalls, trees, First Nations art and gleaming spotlessly clean marble. And that's while you are still in the terminal, before you reach baggage reclaim.

The signage is impeccable and incredibly multi-lingual - reflecting the city's impressive diversity.

It's efficient too.

On my travels today, I glanced at the departure screens and saw that the 10:00 to Toronto was at gate C50: I checked again closer to the gate and as I was doing this, one of the airport's help team approached me - "Can I help you find your gate, sir?". Just as well - it turned out that I was heading for Westjet's 10:00 to Toronto and not Air Canada's! My gate was C45. Now I would of course have found that out at some point, but better sooner than later!

Walking around the airport after a meeting there the previous day, I'd been impressed by the toilets. The entrance walls are covered with highly decorative coloured ceramic tiles forming a distinctive pattern. Inside, the pattern is repeated on other vertical surfaces. Today, as I went to gate C45, I used different toilets - and they had a different but equally beautiful pattern of coloured ceramic tiles on the walls.

Everything - everything - looked clean, neat, tidy, friendly. Is Vancouver the world's most beautiful airport?