Talk about outages, I originally meant to talk about a coming trip to Victoria… last weekend. Which means that I’ve been there and back again – rather than a preview, it’s more of a recap…

How was it?

Simply put, it was great! Only went up for a couple of days – just one night. Went up without a large plan… just thought we’d go up and see the sites… some good and some weird followed.

– Stayed at The Empress. Holy shit. I mean, first that was surprising was to find that Victoria is more English than it is French… that was a surprise, compared to what I saw in Vancouver. That aside, The Empress is a remarkable place… 100 years old, with a long history in its own right – a very European feel to the place: the room we had was small by US standards, large by EU standards but it had a huge ceiling, was very well appointed, and even had a window that opened for fresh air… and a harbor view. Highly recommended (along with the Afternoon Tea, which I had never done before – quite a nice experience (and very filling.))

– The Victoria Clipper – this was the transportation we didn’t take but should have. This was my bad planning at work… even though I’ve been in WA for over four years, I’m still a noob. I originally planned to explore the area slowly so there’d always be one more surprise around the corner… seems I’ve gone very slow. So I went up to the WA state ferry schedules… For the island, there’s two ferries: Port Townsend and Anacortes. Anacortes was closer so I went with that one… that landed in Sidney, rather than Victoria proper – since it was like $170+ to bring a car, I said “screw it – they have a mass transit system on the island.”

– The Sidney Ferry. What a mess. Didn’t realize that Sidney was at the opposite end of the island – and about 80 minutes from Victoria via bus. On top of that, on the way home, we kept looking for the same stop we picked the bus up from… the bus driver mumbled the “exit here for Anacortes” stop so we went all the way to the Vancouver/Gulf Islands ferries – had to hop in a cab to get back to our ferry!

– The Victoria Clipper – Again, recommended. Pricier but the best way to get to Victoria from Puget Sound – West Seattle can take the PT ferry without issue (or added cost)

– The Royal BC Museum Thingy – very entertaining! At least for me… it had a lot of history around Canada and Victoria alike.

– Other activities – was all around good. Visited the downtown area, Chinatown, the water front and a few restaurants – also a number of gelato places… there was also a store called Utopia that had the majority of Threadless‘ inventory. Like I said, great place to visit.

Definitely a place I’d return to especially given the company I kept!