Victoria 2022

[From travelogue emails sent at 10:14 and at 10:17 p.m.] Sunday, June 12: BC Ferries Sometimes selfies I take with Shobhit turn out surprisingly great. My favorite is when he's not feeling self-conscious about his crow's feet—if he has them at all in mind, he will insist on not smiling because he thinks not smiling will slow the spread of the wrinkles. But, when he's just having a good time and smiles for my camera without thinking, the pictures are always far better. I love this photo, and it was just taken on the elevator of the BC Ferries boat we took from Tsawwassen Terminal, which is about 23 miles south of downtown Vancouver, B.C. but 25 miles around Boundary Bay from the Peace Arch border crossing, and at the end of a 2-mile artificial causeway whose end, where the actual ferry terminal is, is all of 1,600 ft (less than a third of a mile) from the 49th parallel that forms the international border between Washington State and mainland British Columbia. A lot of people don't realize how much further south of the 49th parallel Victoria, B.C. is—it's roughly in line with the latitudinal location of Mount Vernon, WA (48°25'42"N vs 48°25'12"N; this means Victoria's city center sits roughly 3,000 ft north of that of Mount Vernon)—and the Tsawwassen ferry makes a pretty hard southwesterly direction to sail to the Swartz Bay terminal, which is about 20 miles north of downtown Victoria on the south end of Vancouver Island. In fact, for maybe a quarter of its sailing distance, the Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay ferry sails through what are technically U.S. waters in the Strait of Georgia. Anyway! The BC Ferries "Super C-Class" vessels that sail this route are big—525 feet long (the equivalent of a 44-story office building on its side), and with five decks, four of which are public: two vehicle decks and two passenger decks, hence the elevator, something I am not used to seeing on Washington State Ferries (362' long, that being the equivalent of a 30-story building on its side), but which also have two car decks and two passenger decks. Hmm, maybe these also have elevators somewhere and I've just never noticed them. (Apparently they do.) BC Ferries, incidentally, are the second-largest ferry system in the world, just behind Istanbul and just ahead of Washington State Ferries, although they handle just a bit fewer passengers per year (at least as of 2018) than Washington. They have 36 vessels, of varying sizes, and 47 terminals, most of them between the British Columbia mainland and the quite-large Vancouver Island (whose length exceeds the latitudinal height of Washington State).
Victoria Butterfly Gardens So. Shobhit and I got up early on Sunday morning, and were headed out in the car by about 8 a.m., so we could hit the Canadian border control by 10ish. We got through surprisingly quickly—probably because of all the information already loaded into their ArriveCAN app; the U.S. should really do something similar to expedite the border crossing process—and then . . . we barely missed the 11 a.m. Tsawwassen-Swartz Bay ferry. So, we hung out at the terminal for about an hour, easily got on the noon ferry (this was why we went this direction instead of to Port Angeles: the Black Ball ferry line over there has only three departures a day from each side, where as BC Ferries has a ferry every hour on the hour between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. (although for some reason they skip the 8 a.m. hour), allowing for far greater flexibility if, for instance, you barely miss a ferry you didn't reserve in advance (which we did not do because it costs extra and we are cheap). The 95-minute crossing got us to Swartz Bay Terminal at 1:35, and we then headed straight to Butchart Gardens, which was on Shobhit's agenda having remembered going on both our 2007 and 2008 trips (2008 being the last time we were there) and he always wants to go back. But! On the way there, less than two miles from Butchart Gardens, we happened to see Victoria Butterfly Gardens, and we stopped to check out their prices. It was $18 CAD a person (that's about $14 USD), which was totally reasonable. I got a good 13 shots in the roughly 45 minutes we spent there, and then we moved on. Note that in the shot above you can see about three butterflies fluttering through the shot.
Butchart Gardens . . . And here we are, at Butchart Gardens. It's roughly 13 acres of beautiful gardens located a little more than halfway in the Saanich Inlet from the Gulf Islands to the north of Greater Victoria, and thus an easy choice to stop at before getting to our hotel, as it was roughly on the way. The above photo is kind of a lucky photo; I just love how Shobhit is framed by the trees.

A place like Butchart Gardens is where the "portrait" feature on my iPhone camera can come in really handy—and allow for some more interesting photos than I managed in 2007 and 2008. The blurred background of this photo is one of the signature features of the site, the "Sunken Garden."

Another photo technique I've been using for a few years but started long after my last trip to Victoria: taking photos through my binoculars. This is of a Japanese Dragon sitting atop a small waterfall in the Japanese Garden section; it was apparently recreated in 2017, although I can't find information about how or why the original was apparently damaged—the Butchart Gardens Facebook post about it from 2017 includes a link to the "full story" on their blog but the link is now broken.

This part I nearly forgot to include: also in the Japanese Garden, me walking across the stone steps in 2022 vs in 2007. These shots are 15 years apart and although I've gained more weight than I care to have over recent years . . . so far as I can tell, I still look way better now than I did in 2007! Aging doesn't usually do most people any favors . . . but I'm not most people.
Fairways Hotel on the Mountain After leaving Butchart Gardens, Shobhit decided to take the scenic back roads to our hotel, which were kind of shockingly narrow. It didn't add a huge amount of time to our drive, plus it yielded some interesting sights along the way. A large portion of the area is "Bear Mountain Resort Community," although ironing out the details has proven difficult for me: "Fairways Hotel on the Mountain" is the hotel Shobhit found for us on Hotels.com, and is clearly part of this "resort community," although there are no links to it on the Bear Mountain website—the "reservations" link there only leads to the Westin Hotel, which is the larger building to the east, of the three that Fairways Hotel is in the middle of. To the west of us was a building I completely assumed was another hotel, but when I went over there to see if I could joyride their elevators to the much higher top floor (11th), I found all the doors locked and no one around. A bit of further online research revealed that was actually a condo building. But, whatever. Fairways Hotel has all of three floors, but we still got booked on the top floor, with a view of the golf course behind us. The room itself was larger than I realized; 750 square feet, which is a good 200 square feet larger than the first apartment I ever lived in, in Seattle (1998-2004). It had a large bathroom adjacent to and even with a window overlooking the main portion of the bedroom; and even a second bathroom off the suite's entry hallway.
Monday, June 13 Our unit also had a balcony, from which this was our view: a portion of the "Mountain Course" between us and the peak of Mt. Finlayson (elevation 1,375'), which is accessible via trails from both Bear Mountain and Goldstream Provincial Park on the other side of it. Given a choice I would take the golf course out of the view, but given how much I enjoyed our hotel room I won't nitpick too much. The same goes for the fact that, for a suite this size, with a full kitchen, it was surprisingly little stocked with kitchen items you might expect: we got better amenities at Hercules Inn when we visited my mom in tiny Wallace, Idaho, where they have things like a colander, a cutting board, or even salt and pepper—none of which were in our suite at Fairways Hotel (they did provide a cutting board when Shobhit asked, but they did not have salt and pepper or a colander). At least they had a couple of pots, and when I made macaroni and cheese for dinner the first night, in lieu of a colander I strained the pasta using a slotted spoon. Anyway I still enjoyed this view, golfing green and all.
Goldstream Provincial Park: Goldstream Falls I didn't even expect to see this waterfall, honestly. And yes, I know, waterfalls are a dime a dozen, and I'm sharing this photo of one with you anyway! This was in Goldstream Provincial Park, which Trans-Canada Highway 1 cuts through the middle of on the way to another point of interest we were headed for (I'll get to that)—I was actually looking for a different specific waterfall in this park, but the GPS directions we started while still on the hotel's wifi didn't take us to the right entrance. A guy we found at a "group site" told us what we were looking for was on the other side of the highway; the park ranger lady we found at the entrance over there told us the first guy was mistaken—in the end they were actually both kind of wrong, although to the lady's credit she said she was new and found it confusing herself. She did also tell us, however, that there were these "Goldstream Falls" just a five-minute trail walk right near where this entrance was, so we went ahead and checked them out since we were right there anyway. These falls are at the bottom of extensive stairs and boardwalks, the maintenance of which was strikingly impressive, at least compared to how well kept most things of this sort are in the States.
Saanich Inlet Remember when I mentioned Saanich Inlet earlier? We were on our way to a destination roughly across it from Butchart Gardens, just on the west side of it. The inlet is a little over 15 miles long, and we pulled over at a viewpoint site where I got this pretty spectacular picture.
Malahat Skywalk Trip highlight! I've been to Victoria 6 times before this, but these visits are unusually spread out over the course of my life: 1985 (when I was nine); 1991; 2000; twice in 2007, and the last time was 2008—it's been fourteen years since then, making it the longest stretch between visits. I went out of my way to find points of interest in the Greater Victoria area that are new since then, and that's how I discovered Malahat Skywalk—which opened just last year! Good thing I didn't go back to Victoria even a year earlier or I might have just missed it. And: it could hardly be more tailored to Matthew's Interests™, what with my well-known love of skyscrapers. Granted, this is hardly a "skyscraper," at all of 10 stories—but! Its lookout level is 820 feet above sea level, which is the equivalent of a 60-story building (Seattle's Rainier Square Tower is only 30' taller than that). And you know me, anything with a high-vista view is something I'm going to be all over.

The mostly wooden structure, built on the traditional territory of and in partnership with the Malahat Nation, has no elevators, and features a spiraling walkway that makes it fairly easily accessible to wheelchair users. The spiral staircase that runs up the center is also surrounded by a slide, which was great fun to slide down (on a mat), although Shobhit chickened out and did not follow behind me when I came down. I even had my camera ready to video him coming out the bottom and round up recording the exit of some rando lady instead.

The view, of course, is spectacular. Even without my face in it!

Several of these driftwood pieces depicting wildlife native to Vancouver Island could be found near Malahat Skywalk. They're all made by local artist Tanya Bub.
Monday, June 13: Goldstream Provincial Park: Niagara Falls Back to Goldstream Provincial Park! We returned to this other waterfall on the way back from Malahat Skywalk—and here's why: Canada's (or at least Vancouver Island's) highways have this thing where they put little poles up on the dividing line in the center of the road, preventing you from crossing it to turn left. Every so often, they have a "U-turn lane," and there isn't one north of Malahat Skywalk for nearly five miles, so you have to drive that far before you can turn around to drive south again. In that particular spot, you have to take an off ramp, follow signs through an underpass to get to the other side of the highway, and then you can get back on southbound. Thus, when we ran into this same issue when we found that the small parking area for "Niagara Falls" in Goldstream Provincial Park, we agreed we would just continue on up to Malahat Skywalk after Goldstream Falls, and visit Niagara Falls on the way back. Remember the guy we asked directions from who said the falls were on the other side of the highway? He was right, actually—he just failed to mention they were on the other end of the park to the north. When Shobhit first asked where we could find Niagara Falls, the guy quipped, "In Ontario!" Thanks, very helpful. There's actually a Niagara Falls in Greater Victoria too—so-named because the waterfall is close to the same height (47.5 meters or 156 ft here, versus 51 meters or 167 ft in Ontario). I can't even remember now how I learned about "Niagara Falls" in my extensive pre-trip research on things to do; I just knew that once I found out about it, I had to see it. Plus, there's a trestle bridge, technically now closed, a further 30-minute walk from the falls (which is only five minutes from the tiny parking area on the highway), which I would have loved to go and see, but we weren't up for an extra hour of walking at that point.
Mount Tolmie Park And my other new-ish practice with every city I travel to, something I've been doing now since about 2019: before going on the trip, I Google "best views of [insert city name]." The search for Victoria turned up Mount Tolmie park: "The Best Place to View the City," according to the official park website. After Mahalat Skywalk and Goldstream Provincial Park, we had time on Monday finally to drive into the city itself, and this was the first stop I suggested; the summit viewpoint—the above shot was taken with my phone using roughly 2x zoom—is two and three quarter miles from downtown Victoria.
Beacon Hill Park Then, I said I wanted to see the Ogden Point Breakwater—another of the many points of interest I had found in pre-trip online research. I also had Beacon Hill Park as a tentative place to see on my list, and I did not realize until we followed GPS directions there (using A&W wifi at Hillside Shopping Centre, the mall we passed on the way to Mount Tolmie Park and Shobhit wanted to check out after we were done there; it's where we found poutine with vegetarian gravy) that our route would take us down Cook St right alongside the eastern border of the park. And then I saw Google Maps (which seems to load its grid and labels even when in Airplane Mode, which both of our phones were the whole time we were in Canada) label a point of interest in the park: World's Tallest Free-Standing Totem Pole. Well, we had to pull over and see that! It's 127 feet, 7 inches tall. I literally realized while I was writing this very sentence that that's 12 and a half feet taller than the Malahat Skywalk! Anyway, there's a lot more detail I could share about this totem pole that was erected in 1956—particularly how people apparently nitpick about the definition of "world's tallest—but I already posted that to Facebook. There are totem poles all over the place in Greater Victoria, by the way; I'm not sure I've ever been anywhere else with such a high concentration of them. I did just learn while writing this that apparently totem poles originated with only six indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest, so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise that we see so many in this region—but especially in Southeast Alaska and British Columbia, where "tall multiple-figure poles were first made," by only the Northern Northwest Coast Haida, Tlingit, and Tsimshian peoples. Additionally, evidently similar but different in function "large human welcome figures and interior house posts were made by the Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth people further south, and the Coast Salish people in Southern British Columbia and western Washington also carved large human figures representing ancestors and spirit helpers on interior house posts and as grave monuments."
Clover Point Park Beacon Hill Park extends about 0.7 miles from Southgate St to the coastal waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the southern shore of the City of Victoria; the portion of the park between Dallas Rd and the beach extends to the west about another half mile to meet up with Clover Point Park, which we could see from the beach over at Beacon Hill Park and Shobhit wanted to check out real quick. We drove over there, and didn't even get out of the car, but stopped just briefly enough for me to get this photo of the many windsurfers (note that it was never particularly warm during our visit, although it stayed mercifully dry the whole time; highs every day were around 60°). Incidentally, although it was largely cloudy, every once in a while they would break enough for us to get pretty beautiful glimpses of the Olympic Mountains across the strait on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. The distance from Victoria to Port Angeles across this strait is only about twenty miles; further east the coasts are closer together, at ten and a half miles.
Ogden Point Breakwater Then, it was a one-and-a-half-mile drive west to the Ogden Point Breakwater, initially finished in 1916 and stretching 2,500 feet out from the shore. That's the equivalent of 0.47 miles, so when Shobhit and I walked out to the small lighthouse at the end of it and back, that alone was just under a mile.
Bear Mountain Resort Community After returning to the hotel on Bear Mountain for the day, I left for a brief hike along trails behind the hotel, right next to Mt. Finlayson, the peak visible from our suite. It was close to getting dark, so I turned back fairly quickly for fear of getting lost in the dark by myself, and all told I walked all of half a mile from the hotel, then back the same distance. On the upside, about halfway along the trail, I got this stunning panoramic view to the west.
Tuesday, June 14: Parliament Building tour This was Shobhit's idea, and I was all about it: not just visiting Victoria's Parliament Building, but taking a free guided tour. I must be getting old, because now I get excited about tours of state (and now, province!) capitol buildings, and am even collecting them—I'm hoping to add a tour of the capitol building in Cheyenne, Wyoming next month! This was, of course, my first capitol building tour that included any direct reverence for the Queen of England. What a bunch of royal bootlickers!
Royal BC Museum The Royal BC Museum was not even on my list of things to do this visit, but it happens to be right next to the Parliament Building, and we had time to kill. Plus, we discovered tickets were discounted to $5 CAD due to only the second floor being open; the lady at the ticket counter explained that the entire museum will close this September and then remain closed for eight years before scheduled reopening in 2030. She didn't mention that this plan has caused a great deal of local controversy. Well, it worked for us! Five bucks is a perfect price (at the current exchange rate that's equivalent to $3.90 USD). God knows how much tickets will be when it reopens . . . the year I turn 54. Anyway, if I were to highlight what is arguably the museum's most famous exhibit, I'd share my photo of the mammoth diorama. Instead, here's a beautiful 2008 piece by artist Emma Nishamura, part of a collection commemorating the clothes her grandmother made while in a Japanese internment camp in Canada during World War II. This was part of the "Broken Promises" exhibition about Japanese Canadian displacement and internment, full of information equally depressing and vital. What struck me, as an American, was how the histories we hear about these atrocities are so specifically American—and American liberals tend to romanticize Canadians a little too much. Their history of racist policies and practices is hardly much better than ours. (To their credit—I guess—they are slightly better at acknowledging it, if not necessarily at making up for it.) Side note: The U.S. interred 120,000 Japanese Americans; Canada interred 21,000. That's one in 1,125 Americans versus 1 in 562 Canadians.

I would have been delighted had our trip overlapped with Victoria Pride, but that doesn't happen until Sunday, June 26—same as Seattle. But, they still commemorate all of June as Pride Month, and just like when we were in Sydney for Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, I am always struck by the extent cities outside the U.S. commemorate Pride. In Victoria, the Empress Hotel has six different Pride Flags flying out front; in this above shot, we saw that each of the Victoria Harbour Ferry Water Taxis (which I would have loved to have taken a ride on—I last did during my visit in 2000) flew their own separate Pride Flags. Here, the boat to the far left flies the classic Rainbow Flag; the one to the right flies the Progress Pride flag; and the one in the center slightly modifies the Progress Pride flag for intersex inclusion (that's the only one of these three pictured not flying in front of the Empress Hotel).  
Beacon Hill Park (again) We had late lunch reservations (what I intended to make "linner") at 3:45, and after about an hour just strolling along the waterfront—during which I had one of my favorite moments, just because I found myself consciously acknowledging what a nice time I was having—we still had two full hours to kill. At this point we had made our way further south again, and were all of six blocks from Beacon Hill Park. So, we agreed to walk down there and check out more than just its beach and totem pole, this time from its opposite, north end. It really is a beautiful park, with some very interesting sights. If you look closely in the above shot, you can see Shobhit on the footbridge.
Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel And now, what we had finally been waiting for! Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel, something I had never done during any of my previous six visits to Victoria. (I was unsure about my 1985 and 1991 visits, and even texted my dad to see if he remembered; he texted back that we "could not ever get in." When I told him Shobhit and I had anniversary reservations for June 14, he replied, "[Hotel] guests come first." I had no reason to think we'd get bumped; the current Tea at the Empress website says nothing about prioritizing hotel guests, and obviously there was nothing even remotely like OpenTable.com in the eighties and nineties.) I may have looked into it for more recent visits, but probably always shied from the cost; I just decided this time it was about time I marked it off my list—even though it's $89 CAD (about $69 USD) per person. Well, guess what? The experience was so wonderful, so much fun, and both the food and the tea so delicious that I would absolutely do it again. Even picking out the tea was fun, although how good the tea was really varied by flavor: we started with one pot of Cochin Masla Chai (the best) and 1907 Orange Pekoe (the only flavor they served until several years ago, we were told; pretty good but I liked it better than Shobhit did); then we got a third pot, because Shobhit was so intrigued by the name "Blue Suede Shoes," but then neither of us cared for it that much as it was too sweet. I have to make a side note about the food, which was alone what made it worth every penny. As you can see in the photo, it comes on a three-level stack of serving plates, and we were told to work our way up from the bottom. Starting with scones with butter cream and jam that was so good I nearly fell out of my chair. Then, two each of five different types of small sandwiches (all vegetarian, which is not typical but they happily accommodated us), nearly all of which were delicious; the only one I didn't think was fantastic was a little loaded with avocado, which I don't care for; even then it was still edible, which considering my distaste for that awful fruit is impressive. And then, at the top, another two each of five small desserts, either cookies, pastries or confections. I almost wet myself. TMI?

As you can see, the dishware was also beautiful, and our food came with a charming little chocolate Happy Anniversary sign set on top. After I posted my photos to Facebook, my friend Ivan texted me to ask how it was as he had always wanted to do it—he just visited Victoria himself a month and a half ago but he was there by himself. When I noted how very expensive it is he replied, Well it's not McDonalds, Matthew. Ha! Indeed not. I was well and truly stuffed at the end of this meal, but also eminently satisfied. If asked to choose a favorite thing I did this visit, I would be sorely tempted to choose Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel.
Market Square We were done at the Empress in just over an hour, at which point it was about a quarter to 5 p.m. We did so many things there this trip, which was the longest I have ever stayed there at one time (I believe I only ever stayed one night, if even that long, for all previous visits; this time we stayed three nights), many of them either for the first time ever or for the first time in so many years, it largely felt like I was visiting Victoria for the first time. I really had a blast, and the idea of leaving the lovely downtown area by 5:00 on Tuesday made me sad. So, I suggested we walk around just a bit more. I Googled "free things to do in Victoria" and found a list mentioning Market Square, so we walked over there. It has a very "old town" vibe. We didn't stay long or buy anything, but it gave us something to do. We then made our way back toward downtown and spent a few minutes inside yet another mall, Bay Centre. I found myself thinking about the recently rapid decline of shopping malls in the United States, and wondering if the decline was happening more slowly in Canada? There seems to be a lot of malls still open—if not exactly crawling with shoppers—in Victoria. I really would have liked to spend some time in Victoria after dark, especially to see the Parliament Building lit up with all its lights, but our hotel being out on Bear Mountain precluded that. We had paid the full day fee for parking in a garage and actually considered hanging out until dark, but this is late spring and we'd have had to kill another four hours at minimum. We bagged that idea and headed back to the hotel at around 6 p.m.
Duty Free And that's a wrap for Victoria 2022! I know I my lengthy captions can be a bit much; I just keep rambling on in print if no one tells me to shut up! Anyway, we stopped at the Duty Free store just north of the border after catching the 11 a.m. ferry, and Shobhit bought eleven bottles of liquor—having to pull over to pay all of $26 in taxes once we finally got through the rather long line to get back into the U.S. Now we're well stocked in rum, gin, and several bottles of whiskey—all much cheaper than it ever would have been at home. My favorite part, though, was the packet of four maple sandwich cookies that cost me a whopping $1.25 CAD (98¢ USD). What a steal! Screw the liquor, I want to go back to Canada for the duty free cookies! This was, of course, our first time back in Canada since the pandemic began. I hadn't been since my trip to Toronto with Danielle in 2019; and I hadn't been to British Columbia since visiting Ivan when he lived briefly in Vancouver in 2018. First time to Victoria since 2008, but you can bet I'll be back again far sooner than another fourteen years. I'm actually thinking about next year.