Victoria

Nearly a year ago, my mom, sisters in law and I went to downtown Victoria for a girls weekend. It was on that trip that my faithfully blogging sister-in-law and ever-insisting-on-my-career-in-journalism mom convinced me to start keeping up a blog. This is largely unimportant information, except that I find it interesting that this trip commemorates almost one full year that my blogging habits have survived! And I suppose it also commemorates one full year of marriage, since that’s the real occasion Ajay and I went to celebrate. So anyway, lets get into our trip:

First off, the ferry terminal in Tsawwassen offers a cute indoor strip of touristy shops, food and coffee joints that Ajay and I spent just shy of two hours exploring given that we were about 15 cars away from making the 5:00 ferry and that the 6:00 ferry that runs every Friday was cancelled for the 8th for a reason yet unknown to Ajay and I. So anyway, we had some time to kill before the 7:00 finally arrived. I can’t say either of us were too perturbed by the setback, mind you. If I had more time I could go into an embarrassing amount of stories of our travels where things have gone far worse, so we were at least excited to have somewhere warm to sip our coffees and wait for our trip to get underway.

We finally boarded and got all situated with our embarrassingly obvious spread of tourist maps and Battle Cats open on the iPad to kill the hour and a half of time it would take to get us to the island. Given how hungry I know Ajay was at this point, I’m impressed to say we were both still in pleasant spirits!

We were greeted by the beautifully lit parliament buildings as we wove through down town to get to our hotel. Seriously. How beautiful.

Without even running our things up, we jetted back out to the streets to find Ajay and I some grub. To say the better part of our planning of our trip involved deciding on where to eat each meal would be an understatement. Never has Ajay reminded me so much of my oldest brother Brayden as he did on that ferry ride; Brayden, of course, being notorious for asking everyone where they’d like to go for dinner while we’re waiting for the waitress to bring us our lunch. Ajay had his face in his Zomato app for a good portion of the travel time, although the final decision actually came from a recommendation Ajay remembered receiving from a coworker. The recommendation was for a pub called Spinnakers.

Our first impression, admittedly, was that it’s wedged into a pretty dodgy looking corner of Victoria (or at least it seems so at night). But inside, it was pleasantly classy! The pool tables and outdoor seating with a view over the water (complete with heat lamps!) gave the whole place a cool vibe, and the food was delicious. Ajay couldn’t get over the fries (or how many they gave him) and my pizza was suuuper thin, crispy, and just delicious. Talk about hitting the spot.

By the time we rolled out it was well after ten and I’m sure we walked like hunchbacks with how much food we stuffed into our bellies. But come the morning, we were well geared up and ready to hit my non-negotiable brunch spot: The Blue Fox.

First, though, speaking of the morning I can’t help but show you just how beautiful this morning was. I mean really, could God have given us a better anniversary present? Especially since the lady at the hotel upgraded us for free to a room with a view. Can’t complain about that.

So now to business. The Blue Fox.

That little nook wedged full of people, that’s the line Ajay and I didn’t have to wait in because for the first time ever, there was a seat ready and waiting for us the moment we walked in the door. I almost didn’t recognize the place without throngs of people hovering around the hostess desk. But when we walked by an hour later, it was looking more the way I remembered. Few things are so satisfying. But among those few satisfying things has to be the food at The Blue Fox. Seriously. It’s just good.

I don’t think I’ll ever order anything other than the eggs benny from The Blue Fox. I changed it up a little and got the Moroccan chicken version this time, although the next time I go I think I’ll revert back to the more familiar types. It was delicious, but I like my familiar flavours; especially in the morning.

After that, we were fortunate for the opportunity to spend the day exploring the city, which involved plenty of walking to help our tummies through the difficult task of digesting all the goodness we stuffed into there. Just to give you an idea, we ate at around 10:30 and it wasn’t until around sunset at almost 5:00 that we were finally able to process the idea of eating more for dinner. That may also have to do with the fact Ajay couldn’t resist testing out a little bakery we had recommended to us by our shuttle driver.

Anyhow, we spent all that time walking the city, browsing antique shops down Fort Street (Antique Row, they call it), hitting the Market Place and all the goods down Government Street. There’s a beautiful store called migration in the Bay Center which I could have blown a thousand dollars in if I had the option. If you’re rich, go there. Buy lots of things. And once you have no use for those things, donate them to me. We also got coffees from Murchies (a historic coffee and tea shop with tons of sweets and goodies) and walked down by the water.

It’s also worthwhile to stop in at shops that offer free samples. There was a cool cheese store I can’t remember the name of that sampled some seriously unbelievable types of cheese to us and told us a bit about how they’re made. Roger’s chocolates also had some yummies on sample, and their spread of sweets is pretty crazy. Speaking of sweets, there may not have been samples as this candy shop, but it’s all for the best anyway since I could very well have absorbed my daily recommended intake of sugar just standing in there.

We waited for the sun to set enough for the parliament building lights to go back on so we could grab some pictures.

Then it was back to the hotel to pick up our car and strategize our dinner plan. Long story short, the restaurant we picked was so busy there was a lineup just to put their name on the list. I was reluctant to give up on it because of how great a parking spot we had found, but we eventually decided to call a new Italian place that said they’d have a table ready for us by the time we drove the five minutes over there. They made the decision pretty easy.

While beautiful and decently priced for fancy Italian food, Il Covo Trattoria wasn’t overwhelming in terms of the portion size or the speed of service. Nonetheless, being house made, everything was delicious and our server was super friendly! No complaints from us, for sure. And look at this beautiful entrance:

And most importantly, an equally amazing parking spot to the one we had outside restaurant option #1.

I end this too-long and too-detailed account of our vacation with this one last blurry photo I couldn’t resist taking of the lit-up parliament buildings and a candid photo I took of Ajay paying extra careful attention to the safety instruction video that everyone else was ignoring on the ferry home. Thanks for reading!