Denver to Vancouver Summer 2019

14th August 2019

We decided to treat ourselves to a little lie in today. Except that Andrew and I were both up before 7am! Last night, after dinner, we walked down by the dock in Victoria, and by the time we got back we were shattered. Clearly we didn’t need as much sleep as we thought.

Vancouver Island is the largest populated landmass between Western North America and New Zealand. It is 500km long, and 100km wide.

The Parliament building (or Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, as they like to call it) was lit up like a Christmas decoration last night, so we decided to go back today to investigate.

But first - breakfast.

We watched a few travel vlogs before this holiday, and when looking at Victoria, the same cafe came up as a must for breakfast. So we caught the bus from our hotel to the correct stop and walked to The Blue Fox Cafe. And there was a huge queue. Andrew - not being one to wait for food when hungry instantly wanted to leave, but I convinced him to give it 20 minutes. A very efficient waitress seated us within half an hour and it was worth the wait. I had berry pancakes, Oli had an omelette and Andrew had huevos rancheros. The coffee - a filter coffee with a shot of espresso (called ‘a shot in the dark’) - was divine.

Suitably full, we walked through the town to the harbour and looked inside The Empress Hotel. The hotel was built between 1904 and 1908 and was what most would now call a transit hotel - basically a terminus for steam ships entering the dock. Today it is far grander, and also a place to come to have a wonderful afternoon tea. Now that we look very grubby and crumpled, we didn’t think we could get away with that, so just looked in and took in the atmosphere.

Back to the Parliament. It is free to go in and you can opt for a self guided tour, which we did. It is a beautiful building and the displays and explanations were excellent. There is a special small exhibition about women in the parliament of British Columbia which was particularly interesting. As the Queen of England is still the Queen of Canada, there are lots of similarities to the UK parliament in terms of ceremonial traditions. There are 87 members of parliament. It seems odd that the parliament is in Victoria - an island - when you consider that Vancouver is also part of British Columbia, however, Victoria was a much bigger city than Vancouver in 1871 when the territory became a province of Canada.

The building is beautiful. A bit prickly on the outside, but lots of elaborate marble and gold inside.

We saw the main chamber, which was very grand too.

After leaving the Parliament, we walked along the dock to Fisherman’s Wharf. This one is nothing like the one in San Francisco! It is basically a collection of coloured houses and shops built on stilts in the water. It was really nice to see the houses, but some of the shops and restaurants were a little touristy.

We bought an ice cream each and queued for the water taxi to take us back across town.

The water taxis are SO cute. Little bath tubs with roofs on, painted like yellow taxis of New York. They stop at various points around the bay, and we were taking one to Chinatown.

The nice lady at our motel had said that Chinatown was very small, but one of the oldest town districts in Victoria, so we decided to explore.

It was really nice, with some sweet little shops, and a school, which was beautiful.

We took the bus back to the hotel, collected our bags and then took another bus (the 70) to the port to catch a ferry to Vancouver. The bus literally runs right across the island - Victoria in the south to Swartz Bay Terminal in the north. It took AGES - over an hour, but we got there five minutes before sailing, and purchased foot passenger tickets. Phew!

The boat was packed with mainly Japanese tourists, and we set off waving goodbye to cute little Victoria. All too brief.

The scenery on the journey was breathtaking - as the boat weaved it’s way through a collection of small islands on such a clear day and within 90 minutes, we caught sight of Vancouver. A nice easy sailing. We decided that we had had enough of buses today and treated ourselves to a taxi to our hotel in Vancouver. It’s a city chain, but is nice to have some true comfort for our last few days. Comfort over quirk.

We took a nice stroll into Vancouver and had one of the best meals so far. Steak for us and a decent burger for Oli. Plus a dessert.

Vancouver is unlike anywhere we have been, ever. It has a nice feel about it. It feels safe and clean. But there is that cannabis thing again!

Until tomorrow..