This past weekend my friend Becca hopped out from the east coast, and we headed up to Victoria, British Columbia. We spent a couple of days exploring this somewhat European city, and of course pursuing good food and wine. I’ve uploaded a Victoria by Seaplane photo set to Flickr with a few more pics than appear in this post.
One of the cool things about Seattle / Victoria travel is that there are a couple of unusual options: ferry and seaplane. The ferry looks entertaining, but the seaplane was a must-do. And it turned out to be a great way to travel. The plane was a 10 seat De Havilland Otter, a single prop seaplane. As is normal with small planes, the flight was a little slower and bumpier than we’re used to on gigantic wide-body jets, but a lot more fun and infinitely prettier.
Upon arrival in Victoria, we breezed through Canadian customs (”Anything to declare, eh?”) and walked about a quarter mile from the seaplane port to our hotel, the Fairmont Empress. Now that is a hotel. Gorgeous, historic, and with a standard of service that I’ve rarely seen before.
Saturday started with a light drizzle and worked up to a decent rain as the day went on, so it was a day for indoor stuff. Like the Bug Museum, featuring all sorts of friendly creepy crawlies (”The world’s most beautiful species of Tarantula”). Unfortunately, the Bug Museum was really aimed at kids, and as such, they didn’t let you actually play with most of the bugs. The exception being one particular variety of Stick Bug, which handlers let kids play with, which generated enough of a mob that we stayed away.
After the bug museum, we hit the Royal BC Museum, which was OK, I suppose, but not something to go out of your way to see. I feel a bit bad for small towns — it was clear that a lot of effort went into the museum… it was just kind of, well, amateur. The exhibit about indigenous people was strong; the two-room “ocean station” exhibit with plastic starfish was just kind of embarrassing. But it was still a fine way to spend a rainy afternoon. By the time we left the museum, the rain had picked up enough that I actually was reduced to wearing a hat. I hate hats. It’s pretty obvious why.
Saturday evening, we dined in the Empress Room, the hotel’s formal dining room. The food was good, the service was obsequious to the point where I suspect the waiter was occasionally tongue-in-cheek (”It is my pleasure to serve the Mr. Brooks party tonight. How is the Mr. Brooks party tonight?”), and we had a couple of excellent wines. And yes, our entrées were delivered to the table in very old-fashioned covered silver platters, complete with synchronized cover lifting by two of the wait staff (”One… two… three… Bon appitit!”).
Sunday rolled around and it was time to head back to Seattle. Sort of — our seaplane was supposed to leave at 12:30pm, but bad weather kept the inbound flight from leaving Seattle, so we had no plane. We spent a couple of hours walking around Victoria harbor and through parts of the town we’d missed before. We walked across a cool counterbalanced drawbridge, and got to see it do its thing for a sailboat. Towards midafternoon, our plane finally made it in, and we headed back to Seattle.