Our summer west coast adventure around Vancouver Island kicked off with a few days in Victoria. On account of the pandemic and a less frequent travel schedule, we both were looking forward to some time on the coast. This was my second and my wife’s first visit to this beautiful city. We had incredible luck with weather in what can be a very damp, grey and dreary climate. Our stay came during an extended heat wave and perfectly blue skies, perfect for exploring Victoria on foot. What’s a trip to Victoria without a walk around the inner harbour and a stop to gaze upon the Fairmont Empress?

I always love a lazy vacation day wandering around a city. We walked along the harbour (talking a lot about how we miss doing the same thing when we lived in Halifax) enjoying, of all things, the sound of seagulls. With no specific destination in mind and killing some time before some more formal afternoon plans, we ended up at Fisherman’s Wharf.

When we started planning trip, my wife wanted to do a formal high tea and found a gluten free one at the Pendray Inn and Tea House. It was an incredible experience. She enjoyed all of her goodies, and I enjoyed my decidedly non-gluten free treats. As a bonus, someone made a mistake on my order and it arrived at the table with four scones rather than two. Good thing we did all that walking!

On a different day in the city, I made a quick tour of two craft beer locations. The first was the amazing Refuge Tap Room. It reminded me a bit of Stillwell back in Halifax which to this day remains by favourite craft beer bar anywhere in the world. All three of my selections were outstanding including the Hoyne (from Victoria) Finest British Ale on the left and the Metatheion IPA from Hypha Project in Vancouver on the right.

A short walk across downtown got me to Phillips Brewing. They have a busy taproom with a lot of buzz. The beers were only ok (which is how I’ve found most of the Phillips beers I’ve tried over the years) with the Glitterbomb hazy pale ale on the far left the best of the bunch.

Something I didn’t do on my previous visit was to explore Fan Tan Alley. It is the narrowest commercial street in Canada, but more interestingly, as the sun started to set one night as we took a post-dinner stroll, it was particularly beautiful and quiet and felt like we were in another city altogether for a few blocks.

Our last night in Victoria before flying back home we had our best of some great meals in the city. We ended up at Bodega when another tapas bar nearby was full on account of it being Canada Day with lots of people eating downtown prior to the holiday events. We were glad for the serendipity. Everything here was delicious and they went out of their way to get my wife some gluten free snacks to match my plate of bread. My wife chose a couple of amazing cocktails and I went with wine including a very interesting selection from Uruguay.

We were fortunate that our hotel room window pointed in the direction of the Canada Day fireworks happening along the waterfront a few blocks away. Not a bad way to cap off a couple of weeks on Vancouver Island.