As cosmopolitan as Vancouver was, Victoria is the perfect foil…quaint, slow-paced, petite, with lots of antique buildings that remind you of Canada’s English roots.

But first!  We got there via ferry!  This was new and exciting for us…driving our truck and trailer straight into the belly of a 500 foot long, 100 foot wide boat, alongside semi trucks and other “oversized vehicles.”  By the time I’m writing this we ended up moving by ferry to three different locations, and we all feel that ferries are great.  You drive on and park, and then you are free to go up and relax and enjoy the view while someone else gets you to your destination.  Although, one ferry did ask Dennis to back onto the boat…that wasn’t fun.  But he did it and I don’t think it diminished his appreciation for ferries as a way of transport.

The ferry wove its way through some of the hundreds of islands in the Salish sea, showing us some magnificent landscapes along the way.  The coast up here is rugged and beautiful, with cabins (some aren’t cabins at all, but more like mansions-designed-like-cabins) perched overlooking the sea and beaches piled with driftwood.

Victoria itself has a small downtown that’s very walkable with many pubs, shops, fish restaurants alongside the beautiful stone Parliament building and the famous Empress hotel, with wharfs on most of the sea sides.   As we wandered around town, the lower-speed attitude of the city definitely seeped in and slowed our pace.  Eventually we ended up at an Italian restaurant called Pagliacci’s, where you basically stood in line and waited for your table on the busy Friday night…no reservations, no waiting list…just whoever is next gets seated when a spot opens up.  It was exactly our kind of place — noisy due to the open kitchen and the tables all squeezed together, a line out the door, and reeking of garlic.  We made friends with the people in line who told us that the original was in NYC, but years back the owners up and moved the whole operation to Victoria.  Not sure how true that is, but it passed our “authentic Italian restaurant test” which is to say that the walls were lined with autographed snapshots of celebrities.  

One of our favorite places in Victoria was Fisherman’s Wharf.  It’s a small marina with colorful shops, food stands, and unbelievable cute houseboats.  The kids immediately decided we needed to live on one of these… and I don’t blame them.  They are the cutest houses you have ever seen.  While there we had lunch at one of the food stands…Dennis got some extremely oyster-y (in a good way) oyster stew, and I had a lentil Halibut chowder that was one of the better meals I’ve had on this trip.  Later we indulged in one of what we’ve been told is a “must-do” when in Victoria and had drinks and apps on the porch of the Empress, overlooking the harbor.  Great view, but the food stands at Fisherman’s wharf got the easy W in this contest. 

After the lunch at the wharf, we spent the afternoon at the Royal BC Museum, which is a fantastic natural history museum.  They had  “Maya: The Great Jaguar Rises” exhibit on…how could we not go?!!?  The Mayan exhibit was indeed very cool, but I think what was better in context was the portion of the museum all about Canada’s history.  They have some extremely cool (if a bit out of date in today’s digital age) areas where you can walk through a fishing vessel and canning area, a logging exhibit, displays on the gold rush, native wildlife scenes, a 1900’s town complete with it’s own Chinatown and steam train station.  There were also audio kiosks where you could hear phrases spoken in native languages that we all thought was very cool.  It was a really good immersion in Canadian history and I’m so glad we spent time there.

After taking a “down” day to do laundry, get ready for “road school” to start, clean the trailer and basically just rest, it was time to head to a ferry over to the Orcas Island.  We had a few hours to kill so went to a local beach and basically just killed time in the very best way possible….loafing on a beach.