Seattle/Victoria Trip: Day Three

We woke up in Victoria, BC in our lovely hotel room overlooking the Inner Harbour (you have to spell it that way when you're writing about Canada, you know). :)


We wanted to walk around Victoria a little more, but it was raining steadily that morning. So we decided to go to the Royal BC Museum for a little indoor entertainment and education. They have a fabulous "First Peoples" exhibit that has artifacts and stories about the "Indians" who lived in the lands before the Europeans settled there. (This first pic is from the BC Museum website. You can't use flash photography in the museum, so our pics are a little dark.)


This was an example of a pit house that the first people lived in. They would climb in and out through the smoke hole at the top. (I guess they had to wait until someone put out the fire, huh?)

The museum also had a neat modern history exhibit, with replicas of what buildings looked like in the early 1900's. Here are pics of the "town" courtesy of the BC Museum website:































I enjoyed the exhibit of the turn-of-the-century home, and the kitchen in particular. It was fun to imagine myself cooking in that kitchen, but it would have been a lot of work!
































After a long morning in the museum, we headed for The Sticky Wicket for lunch. The food was incredibly good, especially for a pub! Scott had fish and chips, and I had hot crab and artichoke dip served with warm flatbread. Yummmmmmmmmm.... The service was lousy, but the pub itself was really inviting and the perfect escape from the wet weather outside.

The rain had let up by the time we finished lunch, so we walked around and shopped for awhile. We went into a cozy local bookstore, and then we stopped in at LUSH. Have you ever been there? I'd been wanting to try their solid shampoo (pictured here), so I convinced Scott to go in the store with me. Oh, what an experience! I guess I am just a good little Southern girl at heart, but I am not used to salespeople using foul language while trying to get me to buy products. There was a sales guy there who repeatedly dropped the f-bomb like it was absolutely normal to cuss at customers. Wha?!? I guess that's what we get for going to the "left" coast. ;)

We walked back to our hotel and had about an hour to kill before we had to go catch our clipper back to Seattle. So we each decided to settle in one of the plush armchairs in the hotel's comfy lobby and read our books in front of the fire. I always like to choose a book based on the place I'm traveling, and for this trip I chose Timothy Egan's novel The Winemaker's Daughter. I'll talk more about the book in a later post, but for now I'll just say I was happy to curl up and read for a little while after all the walking we'd done that day.

After about 30 minutes, we heard bagpipes coming from the patio outside overlooking the water. Soon, we saw a beautiful Scottish wedding party enter the lobby, complete with a kilted groom. Awww....

We left for the clipper and had an uneventful ride back to Seattle. The boat wasn't nearly as crowded this time, so we shared a set of 6 seats with just one other couple. Scott got a few pics from the back of the boat as we were heading toward Seattle.





Gorgeous, eh?

Seattle/Victoria Trip: Day Two (Butchart and Swans)

When we booked our clipper ride to get to Victoria, we found out that the cheapest way to get to the Butchart Gardens (which is the most popular tourist attraction in the Victoria area) was to take a bus tour offered by the Victoria clipper people. We are not usually "bus tour" type of people, but this worked out well. The bus driver was appropriately funny and informative. I learned a few fun facts about Canada:

• Lots of people have hobby farms. Canadians get a big tax break if they make a certain amount of money each year by selling their own produce. So Canadians will put out little tables at the ends of their drives with their produce laid out. They put up a sign showing how much the food costs, and buyers simply put the requested amount in a jar. No one mans the booths. Do you think that would work here in the US? Seems like Canadians are more trusting than we are!
  
• When I saw my first gas station in Canada, I was shocked. The price was just $.97! That was a fabulous price! Why would the price be lower in Canada than in Texas, I wondered? But then the bus driver cleared it up for us. Of course, those prices are per liter. Duh. So, that wonderful price ended up being about $4 per gallon.
  
• In 2004, Canadians voted Tommy Douglas as the "Greatest Canadian" in a nationwide contest. Douglas was a socialist and founder of the country's universal Medicare program. (Alexander Graham Bell and Wayne Gretzsky were in the top 10.)
• Canadian elementary children go to school for 10 months out of the year. High school and college kids have an 8-month school year (mid-September to April).

Okay, enough useless Canada facts. On to The Butchart Gardens! We went to the gardens because....well, as tourists, I suppose we were expected to go. Flowers aren't really our thing (I tend to kill them, unless you count all the beautiful little white flowers that cover our lawn) but we wanted to go anyway. In the end, I'm glad we went. It really was beautiful, in spite of the light rain while we were there.


There was no shortage of photo opportunities.


For those of you who don't know my husband, yes, he is always this goofy.

I want this tree in my backyard. LOVE it. Of course, it's probably bigger than my backyard, but whatever.





I hear the gardens are really special at Christmas. They put lights everywhere and they have a twelve days of Christmas theme. You can round a corner and find "nine ladies dancing" or "ten lords of leaping."

We had about 2 hours at the gardens, which was plenty of time for us. Afterward, the bus drove us back into Victoria proper and even dropped us off right at our hotel. We stayed at the Delta Ocean Pointe right on the Inner Harbour. I would recommend it highly. Here is a view of our room:


The room had windows that opened and offered great views of the Inner Harbour. In the harbour, you saw everything from cargo ships to sea planes. It's impressive how all that was orchestrated.


That night we headed out on foot to walk around Victoria. Most of the shops were closed, but it was a nice night (the rain had stopped for awhile, and it was just nice and cool) and we enjoyed our walk. We settled on a pub called Swans for dinner.


We ate on a covered patio area, which was cozy and full of locals. There was a couple behind us who played cards while they drank some in-house brew, and a couple of elderly ladies at another table who split a pitcher of ale. I had shepherd's pie (with lamb braised in oatmeal stout). It was so good, I don't even remember what Scott had. Anything smothered in mashed potatoes is my kind of meal. Ha!

Here's a goofy pic of me before we ate.


Next post (hopefully it won't take me 2 more weeks to write): wrapping up Victoria and heading back to Seattle!

Seattle/Victoria Trip, Day Two (The Clipper)

Okay, so day one was not exactly riveting, I know. We spent most of the time in a plane, so of course there wasn't much to report. But don't worry, day two got better.

We had decided that we wanted to take advantage of being so close to Canada and hop over the border for a day. Victoria B.C. is less than 3 hours away by clipper ship, so we thought that would be a logical destination.

We had to get up earrrrrrrrrrly. For some reason, the clipper only leaves at 8:00 in the morning in the off-season. We were supposed to be there to check in by about 7:00. So, we woke up around 5:30, got ready, left the majority of our luggage with the concierge at the Seattle Doubletree, and took a taxi to the clipper. It was a cool, drizzly morning. Typical Seattle in October.

***Before I start posting pics, let me share this: our camera is horrible. Yup, horrible. It's a Canon PowerShot--you know, just a point and click kind of deal. It's only about 6 years old (I think we got it right before we got married), but it's obviously at the end of its life. The automatic lens cover doesn't close anymore, and sometimes it actually gets stuck half-way open and blocks half the shot. It's kinda funny that it's so quirky. People give us odd looks when we're banging on it, trying to get the lens cover to open. Anyway, I'm just sayin'. Our shots will not be award-winning ones, but hopefully they'll give you an idea of what we saw. ***

So, here's a little shot from Pier 69 in Seattle, where the Victoria clipper leaves from:


Here's hubby (holding both of our coffees!) and the clipper we took:

The clipper ride to Victoria was probably one of the highlights of the trip for me. It started out kinda crappy, because the boat was packed. I was hoping that we'd get to spread out and snooze or read or just be left alone, but it didn't work out that way. And I'm so glad it didn't, as I'll share later.

The clipper is a double-decker. All of the seats are inside (and out of the rain). The top deck has fewer seats, and that's were we went. The seats are arranged in clumps of six--three on one side, three on the other, and a table in between. We ended up sitting with an older couple who live in the Victoria area and a middle-aged couple from Seattle. My ears instantly perked up when the lady from Seattle said, "My husband is a travel writer. He's writing about traveling to Victoria in the off-season."

A writer! A travel writer! Man, how do you get that gig?? And do you have some travel advice for us???

We started up a conversation that lasted the entire three hours of the trip. I relished every minute of it. Both couples gave us lots of advice about Seattle and Victoria, and they were all just joys to be around. The older lady sitting next to me started talking about a commercial currently on TV in Victoria for a local insurance company. She and her husband shared how much the commerical drove them crazy. Evidently it shows a lady who is a very bad driver, and a voice-over says, "You don't drive like her. You shouldn't pay like her." The point is, of course, that if you are a "good" driver, your rates shouldn't be the same as those of a "bad" driver. But the way the point was made drove the couple batty.

"First of all, it's just demeaning. But more than that, it uses improper English. You don't drive like her, you drive like she."

Oh, man! Did I mention that I really liked these people?? They all started discussing grammar and syntax, and oh, I was in hog heaven! Ha!

I found out that the writer has actually just published a book. How exciting! He said it is his third book, and it's called Literary Feast--The Famous Authors Cookbook. What a cool premise--he went to various local and national authors and found out what their favorite recipes are and then compiled them in this book. Food and literature always go hand-in-hand. The author is Terry LaBrue, and the book is a bestseller at thriftbooks.com right now! He said that he just got a contract with Costco to sell it in their stores. That's hitting the big time!

*****
I'm going to have to split this post into two sections so it won't get outrageously long (and the boys should be waking up fro their naps soon). Next post: Butchart Gardens and a cool pub!

Seattle Trip, Day One

Last Thursday, we sent the boys off to Meme and Papa's, and Scott and I packed up and left on our first vacation without the kids! Our plan was to fly into Seattle and spend one night, then taking a clipper to Victoria B.C. and stay for a night, and then travel back to Seattle for three more nights. There is so much I want to remember about our trip, I'm going to try to break this narrative down into segments.

So, this post will be focused on the first leg of our trip--our first night in Seattle.

We had an afternoon flight out of Dallas, so we arrived in Seattle at about 4:30pm. Seattle's public transportation is pretty comprehensive--you can get a free bus ride from the airport to the light rail station, then ride the rail from there to downtown Seattle. Easy.

Well, theoretically easy. This is the part of the post which I will entitle "We Would Suck at The Amazing Race."

Here's Scott going up the escalator at the light rail station...


...and here I am going back down the escalator after we figured out that the light rail actually leaves from the other side of the station.


Hmph. Anyway, we finally got on the train and headed to Seattle. As we took in the scenery on the ride into town, the first thing I noticed was how different the houses looked. None of them were made of brick like the ones here in Dallas--they all had siding and large rectangular windows. I asked someone later about this, and he said that brick doesn't last in an earthquake. Ah...earthquakes. I am definitely not in Texas anymore! I asked the man who told me about the houses: "You get in a doorway if there's an earthquake, right?" "Yes," he said, "and if it's in the middle of the night, roll off the side of your bed. That way if the ceiling collapses, it will fall on your bed and not on your head." Useful advice....

We got out of the train at our stop in Pioneer Square, then realized that we didn't know exactly how to get from the station to our hotel. We consulted our map and got a vague idea of where the hotel was. We went up an escalator and left the station...and our hotel was literally right across the street. Bonus! :)

We stayed at the Doubletree Arctic Hotel. I highly recommend it! Nice bathrobes, amenities, fluffy duvet, flat screen high-res TV, and as everyone who has stayed in a Doubletree knows.....


...cookies. Straight-out-of-a-warmer chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies given to you upon your arrival. Mmmmm. I almost went back and asked for more.

By the time we got checked in, it was about dinner time. We were pretty tired (we had stayed up really late the last couple of nights cleaning and packing), so we decided to just eat in the hotel restaurant for dinner. (Yes, I had just eaten a big fat cookie. Don't judge me!)



The restaurant is called Juno, and it was pretty yummy. Scott and I both had a seafood pasta and some local wine. After a relaxing dinner, it was off to our room. We had to get up earrrrrrrrrly in the morning to catch the clipper to Victoria.

We had a huge wall-length window in our first-floor room, so we slept to the sound of the city. It was not like the sound of New York--full of sirens, loud voices, and car horns, but what we soon learned to be the distinctive sound of Seattle--the buses. Seattle has such great public transportation, and their buses run all night long. So our sleep was punctuated (not unpleasantly) by the buses making their rounds in the otherwise silent city.

Next post: Victoria, B.C.!