Last Summer my husband and I traveled to the West Coast to visit his parents. This was our first experience traveling past Texas and we definitely hope to get back out there sooner rather than later. You can hear about our West Coast adventures in my last two Traveling Newlyweds post. On this trip I had the opportunity to spend a day in Canada. We were visiting his parents during the week of July 4th, so I inadvertently ended up in Canada during their national celebration of 150 years as an autonomous country. While we missed the actual celebrations by a day or so we still got to take in the all the extra attention paid to details, like the flowers outside of the parliament building, and some special topiary displays at Buchart Gardens-a national historic site of Canada.
Travel
We arrived in Seattle, Washington at approximately 11:00 pm their time which meant it was 1:00 am our time. It was a long day of travel from Alabama to Washington, with a stop in Phoenix, Arizona where temps had reached 117 degrees. We went straight to bed that night and the next day my mother in law and I left for a quick trip to Victoria, Canada, BC. We took the the Victoria Clipper, a ferry that travels between Seattle & Victoria several times a day. We arrived at the Victoria Harbour in late afternoon and would have just about 24 hours in the city. It was a whirlwind of tourism but we were able to pack in a lot of the best of Victoria in that short time frame.
Exploring Victoria
Our first stop was to check into our hotel for the night and then explore the area. We took a self-guided walking tour and saw the parliament building, the empress hotel (more on that later) and everything surrounding the harbor. We made plans for a CVS bus tour the next morning that would take us to Buchart Gardens. For dinner that night we made a few attempts to find a local Italian restaurant recommended by the tour guide who booked our next mornings trip. Being "directionally" challenged we were only able to find one Italian restaurant and it had more than an hour wait with people lined up out the door, and down the street. Our hunger took over and we decided just to eat somewhere we could get in quickly. We found ourselves at Bartholomew’s English Style Pub and I have never been more happy for an overcrowded restaurant. I’m afraid to say I chickened out of ordering the poutine (next time Canada!) but I decided to go with their specialty: Clam Chowder. It was by far the best clam chowder I’ve ever experienced. Since I was more than a little hungry I also had the Caesar salad and a charcuterie board along with the chowder. Thanks to a tip from the waitress we ordered the half board to share and it was plenty. The board was heavily filled with cheeses, meats, nuts, jam and toast points. The restaurant happened to be beneath our own hotel so we were able to make it back to our room quickly and rest for the first time that day. We had a big day ahead of us but we did stay up to see the harbor lights, which were beautiful.
Buchart Gardens
Bright and early the next morning we began our bus tour from Victoria to the Gardens. It was a lovely tour and we had a great guide. I love knowing seemingly useless facts, you never know when they might come in handy! The tour was approximately an hour long and we arrived at the Gardens as they were opening. We were able to enjoy each of the four gardens and leisurely stroll through them before the heavy crowds started arriving around lunch. My favorite garden was the Rose Garden, with over 200 types of roses, each one named and the year it was first introduced. There were two different restaurants on site and of course gift shops. There were quite a few things that I wanted to purchase but didn’t want to have a long wait through customs so I picked out an ornament, and later a hot sauce, for our travel collections. We had a light lunch at the Blue Poppy Restaurant, this restaurant is only available in the warmer months because in the winter it serves as an indoor garden. The Dining Room operates year round but you will need to make a reservation if you plan to dine here. An interesting fact about these gardens is that they began as a rock quarry, something you would never guess today. When we left the gardens we jumped back on our tour bus and learned some new things on our way back to Victoria.
Tea “with” the Queen
The highlight of our trip for me, was having high tea at the Empress, a place where literal queens have sipped their tea and looked out over the bay. On the menu was the chicken salad recipe created for Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation in 1953 and still served at Buckingham Palace today. Quick math, that means this chicken salad has been in the royal repertoire for 65 years. I agree with the Queen, it is a fantastic chicken salad. Other palace favorites included Princess Margaret’s favorite lemon poppy-seed cookie, and one of Princess Diana’s favorite teas: Rose Congou Emperor. We were each served every item on the menu and were able to choose our own tea. We had the traditional Empress blend tea, and the Organic Kea Lani which was described as orange notes with velvety sweet pineapple highlights.
After our tea we relaxed by the bay and waited for our ferry to take us back to the states. I would love to go back and have a more leisurely trip but I couldn’t have asked for a better 24 hours.
