Three weeks ago we drove to Vancouver x 3 nights and biked all around. These past few days started with a car and ferry day-trip to Whidbey Island near Seattle, followed by a trip to Victoria x 2 nights The beauty of our visit to Victoria was that we could bike 5 miles from our home to the Victoria Clipper on Seattle’s waterfront and travel by boat - NO car!
Whidbey Island had its Art Trail studio tour this past weekend. We went with a friend to about 10 of the 40+ open studios - mostly at artists’ homes. Our friend surprised herself by buying a pretty neat sculpture made from metal, wood and stone. Then a stop or two later, my wife surprised both of us by buying a small painting. We capped the day on Whidbey with dinner at The Oystercatcher - a beautiful salad, wonderful halibut, Dungeness crab risotto and a sour cherry chocolate cake. Aaahhh…
Weather-wise, our trip to Victoria the next morning was nearly perfect. Our Northwest grey sky lasted only as long as the boat ride from Seattle to Victoria. The sun broke through as we entered Victoria’s Inner Harbour. Yesterday and today were sunny all day long. Temps all three days in the 70s. So happy to be staying home and vacationing around the Salish Sea this summer.
We enjoyed good to very good dining in Victoria (other than the ordinary hotel breakfasts). Lovely Greek food our first night at Ithaka, a restaurant we enjoyed last year as well. A nice picnic lunch on yesterday’s bike ride. Absolutely wonderful linguine with spinach, local mussels, local clams and shrimp of indeterminate origin, as well as a salad with julienned apples, lettuce, blue cheese and seeds and currants, last night at Finn’s. Today’s lunch was at an Indian, yet French influenced, restaurant.
Trip highlights in Victoria, as in Vancouver a few weeks ago, were cycling, art and gardens. Yesterday - our one full day in Victoria - we cycled 42 miles. We started out along the Strait of Juan de Fuca, past the old Chinese cemetary and then we rode past Oak Bay and Cattle Point to Cordova Bay, all along Haro Strait with views to the San Juan Islands. The seabird life on Oak Bay and Cattle Point was great. Then we picked up the Lochside Trail and headed back toward Victoria, before we zigged and zagged to cycle an extra 10 miles or so on the more urban and less scenic parts of the Galloping Goose and Esquimalt Trails. Once we reached downtown Victoria, we detoured over to Government House with its fine gardens and then to Beacon Hill Park and its gardens before we rolled back to our hotel by the Inner Harbour. My wife was grinning all day long.
We enjoyed some art on our arrival and departure days. There’s a bit of a gallery walk through downtown Victoria and 3 of the 7 galleries we saw on arrival day were pretty nice.
Today, we went to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, a fine little museum with well-curated collections of Canadian Artists including Emily Carr and other members of the Group of Seven along with Indigenous B.C. artists, Asian (mostly Chinese) art that went back three millennia, and two other exhibits. Never visited this museum before. We quite enjoyed it!