We spent a short vacation in Victoria BC last weekend with Karen’s Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin. We drove up to Port Angeles on Friday and then took the Victoria Express ferry across the Strait. It should have been termed the “Upchuck Express” and the small boat on the rough water wasn’t one’s perfect image of an outing on the water.
As one passenger said, the best thing about seasickness is that as soon as you get on land you start to feel better. That was the case. We checked into this very cute place (the James Bay Inn) a couple blocks south of the Empress Hotel. We then proceeded straight to the Empress and managed to snag an appointment for high tea at 3:30 (jumping ahead of the snobs in line who looked down their nose at as and said, “You need an appointment for tea”). The tea was wonderful as usual and hit the spot for those of us who’s stomachs had recovered.
We then walked down the main shopping street, stopping at the bookstores and various souvenir shops. We then returned to our rooms, taking a detour to watch a street show from “Scott Free”. I got some nice backlit pictures of some of his stunts. We then had dinner at on ok chinese restaurant, it pleased the youngest in the group and was basically comfort food.
We got a fairly early start the next day and had breakfast at the nicest spot in town. MURCHIES — the picture above tells the whole story. We then spent some time in the mall, Karen found some nice maternity clothes and her cousin found some nice charms for her charm bracelet. We spent the afternoon in the BC Museum and watched a wonderfully cheesy IMAX movie about a 16 year old girl who has a really bad trip after sniffing some spores from a “fossilized” dinosaur egg.
The evening was going to end with a trip to Buchart Gardens, but by this time we were all very tired and it was quite cold outside. (12C) So we didn’t go to the garden. Good thing, because at dinner that night Karen started feeling ill and we had to leave the brewpub in a hurry to get her back to the hotel where she could lie down and recover.
The trip back was aboard the Coho, on ocean liner compared to the small Victoria Express. The seas were not as rough and sickness was avoided. Of course driving back through the Kingston ferry on a Sunday took hours and we just barely made it to our ‘Prairie Home Companion’ concert before it started. (The concert was wonderful and we met a very nice couple who were new medical residents at UW from Hawaii).