Hello! We just got back from our trip to Canada. CAUTION do not read if you are hungry, you’ve been warned.
Kira and I randomly decided to take a short trip across the water to Victoria, B.C., an island off the mainland of Canada. We were so excited to take this weekend trip; Victoria is such a pretty place to visit. We haven’t even scratched the surface on all there is to this destination. Just like all of our trips, on this one we felt like just getting our bearings and discovering in a more organic way. We did not plan too much and just wanted to see where the day took us.
I’ll start from the beginning and not try to bore you with the details, but just in case you want to know about the booking aspect. We looked into the ferry ride over to Victoria. It was only going to be about a 90 minute ride and I was really excited to go on my first ferry ride! While we were looking on the website and talking to Kira’s parents we found out the ferry actually offered packages where you can pay for a round trip and a hotel room. The prices were super fair – it was about $235 total for both of us. A huge plus was all of Downtown Victoria is walkable, so all of our transportation was taken care of. The only thing we needed to buy there was food and drinks. When we actually called the ferry company to check if rooms were available, they were extremely helpful and nice. After checking with the hotels for us, they called us back and got us completely booked stress free. We would definitely recommend the Coho ferry company!
With our plan in place we woke up early on Saturday morning, grabbed some much needed coffee, and headed out with a backpack and my camera. I was really excited to get my camera out; I wanted to practice taking pictures and get used to walking around with a camera, so I don’t feel weird in public taking photos. A big goal of ours is to document what we are doing better so that means more pictures and videos to come! We got dropped off at the ferry about a half hour early so that we could jump in line and grab our tickets that were already packaged together. We boarded the ferry on time at 8:30am and it was such a beautiful day we walked around on the outside as we were setting off. I think we were starting to get a little hangry though because shortly after we took off we started bickering about who would fill out the international form. Overall the ride was a lot of fun, we were able to cool off and hang out and grab another coffee. As we got closer to the port we got outside and starting taking some more pictures. I was testing out my camera’s lighting, so there were many testing photos taken. Not sure I ever really figured out what all the buttons are for, but I am learning.
We hopped off the ferry and went through customs. As usual I irrationally nervous going through customs even though I had no reason to be since I am an upstanding law abiding citizen. It went by very quickly and then we were off. We spent less than 30 seconds deciding that, first things first, we needed breakfast. Our pre-planned breakfast spot saved even more time and bickering. We opened up maps and only stopped to take some pictures of the Parliament Building and the Embassy Hotel. We were enamored by all of the funky streets and the beautiful flowers already in bloom. Our breakfast spot was only about a 15 minute walk from the ferry, but it took us 30. Our destination was the Blue Fox, a super cute and cozy breakfast place with a nice vibe, and most importantly, mimosas. When we got there, the line was pretty long, but after talking with Kira we decided to stay. Mostly because we wanted the day to be as stress free and flowing as possible. We had nowhere else to be and it was completely worth it. I’ll tell you again the line was absolutely worth it. We were blown away by the breakfast. For breakfast we ordered the Oranges del Sol, double stacked French toast, with vanilla bean cream, fresh oranges, roasted pecans, and triple sec syrup, and yes it was unreal. For our savory bit we ordered Moroccan Chicken Benny – Moroccan spiced chicken breast, sautéed mushrooms, onions, palm date apple chutney, and Moroccan spiced holly. The Benny spices were just right and it was such a a wonderful, inventive, and savory breakfast. There will be pictures below, but I don’t know if that does it justice. After we had a couple mimosa’s, which were also fun flavors like mango peach and strawberry passion fruit, we were back to window shopping.
We walked all around and then headed across to China town. We essentially walked down every street and looked into all of the shops. China town was so vibrantly decorated with red roofs, hidden alleys, colorful hanging lanterns, and the Chinese zodiacs on the cross walk. We walked around for about two hours just taking in all of downtown Victoria that we could. Honestly, at that point it was starting to get kind of hot and we still had our overnight bags with us so we walked over to our hotel hoping for an early check-in or a place we could set our bags down and relax. Our hotel was an adorable old style manor call Huntingdon Manor. It was situated right off of the water and surrounded by a garden with even a place for afternoon tea. We were in luck! The hotel had our room ready so we went in and relaxed for about an hour. I really was happy to get out of the sun and take my shoes off!
At about 4pm and we decided to walk down to the Fisherman’s Wharf, because it was closer to the hotel than Downtown, and we saw it on a list of things to check out. We walked over and checked out the entire Wharf; it was so charming to see all of the floating colorful homes on the water. We could not believe people actually lived on those, I would be so sea sick! All of the homes were brightly colored in different colors of the rainbow and connected to the wharf. The entire scene of the fisherman’s wharf including the mini donut food truck/boat reminded us of the pier’s from SoCal. Like always we started to get hungry; it had been at least 3 hours between our last meal which might be a record; however, our reservation for dinner wasn’t until 7:30pm. We decided to walk back to China town to get a totally normal vacation pre-dinner snack and drink. Instead of walking back the same way, we found a new path that took us the long way around by the water. During our scenic walk, we saw a hydroplane land right in front of us. It was such a cool experience to see it fly right overhead. We also walked around the backside of the Parliament building and took pictures of the garden and beautiful building. Just as notable, we saw a couple of dogs in a sidecar of a motorcycle; they were so adorable we had to stop and take a picture. We eventually made it back over to China town and went to an asian fusion restaurant named Bao to get a bao bun. Our bun was filled with pork shoulder, caramelized onions, and pickled cucumbers and it was so mouth-watering. The restaurant had a sort of fun aesthetic with only limited seating. As far as drinks, we ordered a drink called the gin gin drink that was spectacular; it was gin, mint, ginger juice, and ginger ale. After finishing our buns and drinks, we were dying to try an iced Vietnamese coffee and it was also so good. We were just shocked at how amazing this place was. We then decided to walk off our snack and head towards our dinner reservation. We didn’t walk around for too long before we decided to try our luck again and see if we could get into our dinner reservation a little early.
What do you know? We went 2 for 2 – the restaurant let us in early! Thankful to sit down and enjoy our dinner, we walked into an adorable Italian restaurant, Il Terrazzo Ristorante, that reminded us of our time in Florence. It was homey and upscale at the same time. The service was impeccable and the interior design was intricate with window frames hanging and small fires scattered around the outside patio that was completely enclosed. We ordered two different orders, but neither of us could finish the food. I ordered a pasta filled with pulled pork and mozzarella baked with cabbage and bacon cream and topped with a balsamic granny smith compote. Kira ordered a seared venison loin with sour cherries and pickled ginger. They were both excellent. We could not believe how filling it was. Everything was so delicious throughout the day that we decided to look at the housing prices. After dinner we may or may not have ordered a to-go dessert (we definitely ordered biscotti cookies and do not regret it) and then walked back to the hotel. I was so thankful for the walk, because I was stuffed like a turkey on thanksgiving (haha). In the most picturesque rom-com way we walked home at sunset by the water with all the boats and the streets emptying. The pinks and oranges of the sunset just hit differently when you are on vacation. As soon as we got back to the hotel we immediately checked our watches to see how far we walked during the day; we made it to our goal of 10 miles! The rest of the night we just got ready for bed and flipped through the cable channels. Although to note it seemed like regardless of what sports we flipped to there was something historic that happened within about 1 minute of watching. For example, we saw a women professional soccer game where a goalie scored the tying goal! It was pretty exciting. Off to bed for a semi-early next day.
In typical fashion, Kira woke me up from my beauty sleep and ushered me downstairs to breakfast after having hotel room coffee. There was a breakfast at the hotel of course because you know Kira. It was pretty standard hotel breakfast that we quickly ate and grabbed another cup of coffee. That coffee was so hot it sat on the table for over 10 minutes and still burnt my tongue. We realized we were on a semi-tight schedule, so we shuffled out of the hotel and realized we wanted a good breakfast to get us through the ferry ride. Back on the road, we walked to a little breakfast spot tucked away in the suburban outskirts of the downtown. Only to realize the spot did not open for 30 minutes. While we were walking over we noticed some odd street blocked and sort of a spread out crowd. Keen to investigate, we started walking towards the wharf and stumbled upon an early morning 5k. We sat on the sidelines and watched as the groups ran by. It was really fun to see all of the commotion and the early morning drive we definitely didn’t have. By the time we made it back to the restaurant, they had just opened! We sat down at Nourish Kitchen & Cafe and split a breakfast. We had the sourdough Tartine, which was sourdough bread, poached eggs, cashew cheese, roasted eggplant and broccoli, pesto to which we added bacon. We also ordered a really good sweet and salty latte. It was an amazing meal and great way to end the trip. We walked over to the ferry which also happened to be the finish line of the 5k, so we were able to watch people finish their run before we boarded the ferry back.
On the way back, for some reason it was a lot choppier and both Kira and I ended up feeling pretty sea sick. Luckily the gift shop on board sold Dramamine. After braving the rough sea for 90 minutes, we were back in Port Angeles and wrapped up our weekend by going home and doing chores.
Come back again to see what else we get into!
