Victoria part 1

Webster's dictionary added 100 new words to their dictionary this week. Amongst the additions was the word “staycation” meaning a vacation spent at home or nearby. While we are staying home for most of our vacation, we did decide to go to Victoria for a two-day-one-night excursion. We had a wonderful time, and the next couple days of posts I will share some of the pictures I took.
Breakfast on the ferry…

Arrived in Victoria, but it was too early to check into the hotel. So, we pre-registered, parked the car, and walked over to the Royal BC Museum. They had an exhibit there "Treasures from the British Museum". It was very interesting. We wandered around the museum for a couple of hours, then decided to go for lunch. We had lunch outside on the Veranda at the Empress Hotel…

We had seafood chowder (excellent!), fish cakes, and oysters. The food was great, but service was a little slow. We also had a terrific view from our table of the inner harbour and Government Street…

After lunch, we checked into the hotel. We stayed at The Empress. It’s a beautiful hotel. Built in 1908, it’s the oldest hotel in Victoria, and definitely worth a visit…

Then we went back to the museum to finish up there (it was great that we were allowed to leave and go back!). After the museum, we went to the hotel and spent a couple of hours unpacking and relaxing. The hotel room was small and cozy, but it was really warm (no air conditioning). I'm glad it was cloudy and a little rainy, because it meant that it was cool. We had a wonderful harbour view from our room…

For dinner, we walked 2 blocks to Pescatore’s Fish House. The food was fabulous, and the oysters were very fresh. But the service was lacking a little. So, we decided to finish up dinner, and go back to the Bengal Lounge at the hotel for drinks and dessert. After dessert, we wandered around the hotel for awhile and checked out the architecture, and the countless pictures on the walls. The hotel has a long history, and there were artifacts, antiques, and pictures all throughout the hotel.

Downstairs, where the conference rooms are, the hallway looked a little like the movie "The Shining". Very eery...especially, because it was around 11:00pm and there was no one else around. It didn't help that A kept saying "redrum" to me just to freak me out!

We took one last walk outside before going back to our room to crash. The parliment buildings looked wonderful at night all lit up...

Whew! It was a long busy day! But we had a great time, and had some great food.