The lesson for yesterday is to do extensive research when planning a day trip in a foreign country (albeit Canada). I thought that I had, but apparently not deep enough.
So Kayla and I decided we’d go to Victoria (the British Columbia Capital). It seemed fairly straight forward enough. There was a ferry that left Vancouver that took you to Victoria for a reasonable price. We would walk around Victoria, take some pictures, get some food and come back in the evening.
The first thing learned was that maps that have insets can warp your sense of scale. When we woke up on Friday, we figured it would take something like 15 minutes to get from our condo to the ferry. The Thrifty Car Rental map has a decent map of Vancouver with an inset of downtown (where we’re staying). The 15 minute estimate turned into about 45 minutes. Oh well…we caught the next scheduled ferry.
A word about the BC Ferries…nice. The boats we took were very comfortable with a lot of amenities. We took the Coastal Celebration to Victoria and the Spirit of British Columbia on the way back (we had to run up the ramp to catch this one). The ride takes about 95 minutes each way, and you hardly notice it takes that long. On the way to Victoria we ate breakfast at the cafeteria near the back of the boat. Not a sandwich or a granola bar either…eggs and bacon. Each boat had multiple eating establishments, comfortable seats, televisions, a video arcade and a “kid’s zone.” This is a far cry from the ferries we usually take from Aransas Pass to Port Aransas every year.
The second mistake from yesterday? I incorrectly assumed that all ferries go to the same place. Several years ago, Susan and I visited her brother and his wife when they lived in the Seattle area. When we went to Victoria, we took the Port Angeles ferry from Washington. That ferry landed in the Inner Harbor. The ferry we took yesterday…landed in Swartz Bay. That’s about 33 km north of where we wanted to be. Luckily, we were able to get on a city bus that took us down to the place we wanted to be…for the low low cost of $2.25 CDN each way.
We took in the sites, took a bunch of pictures at the Legislative Buildings, ate some really tasty pizza at Brickyard Pizza (hole in the wall, but very good food), had our customary Blenz Coffee and made our way back to Victoria.
We’re due to hit Whistler today.
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