Over the past couple years, instead of Christmas gifts, Andrew and I exchange experiences with his brother Alex and his wife Anna. One year we went out to fancy a dinner at Canlis (and now I am drawing a blank on where we went the year before or last year – it might be my early on set Alzheimer’s – just a joke, but more on that later). In any event, this year we decided to step it up a notch and take a trip. We decided to head north and visit the beautiful Canadian City of Victoria, BC. We took the Clipper up early Saturday morning, it was windy and rainy and Anna and I took our motion sickness medicine to make sure we didn’t start the trip off getting sick. Which seemed to work, since the girl sitting next to me was a light shade of green mid-way through the trip and then had an extended visit in the loo – she should have invested the 25 cents! Once we arrived in Canada and made it through customs we were greeted with a lovely downpour of rain (likely so we wouldn’t be homesick). Luckily, we were staying at the Hotel Grand Pacific, which is almost directly across from the Clipper dock. After we dropped our bags off our first task was to eat! This was sort of how the weekend went: eat, drink, walk, museum, repeat. Literally, that is what we did all day. We did mix it up a little, we ran one morning which was lovely (making the eating a little less guilty), drank coffee or tea and we also did a little shopping. But really our main objective for the trip was to eat. Our first dinner out was amazing, The Black Olive. I highly recommend it if you are ever in Victoria. Andrew found this by googling where to find good Olive Oil in Victoria (Olive Oil is currently his latest passion – I will give him & Google credit, it was very good too). This is a little family owned Greek restaurant off the beaten track. As the Google review said it caters to a lot of older people, but we didn’t mind. We got in because some of those older folks cancelled their reservations. We enjoyed lovely wine, olive oil, I had a delicious white fish, Andrew had rack of lamb and Alex & Anna had delicious pastas. Unfortunately, the Baklava we had at the end was not the best I have had, but it did take care of my sweet tooth and since I was stuffed it was okay. We turned in early, since the day had started early. The next day Andrew and I went on a 4.5 mile run, I had an amazing massage and then we made our way over to the Fairmont Empress for Afternoon Tea. A must when visiting Victoria. These were just a few of the highlights of the trip, we also had an awesome lunch at an Irish Pub the first day, an amazing Italian Dinner the second night and visited some really cool museums – the Maritime Museum and the Royal British Columbia Museum, which was featuring an awesome Photography exhibit.

Overall, it was a great trip, it was relaxing, we ate a ton of great food and we saw some wonderful exhibits, movies and sights. Plus it was just fun to hang out with Alex & Anna for a weekend. I am happy to be able to put together a little recap of the trip. One of my secret dreams is to be a travel writer (not really a secret anymore), so here in my own little blog I can pretend that my whole trip was paid for by some great magazine that sent me away to write about the sights and culinary experiences of a new and exciting city. A girl can dream! Also, as I mentioned earlier, because (sadly) Alzheimer’s does run in my family, these little trip reports and this blog is really a way for me and my family to remember our trips and where we went. If I waited much longer to write, I am sure a lot of the details would be missing. So, until next time and the next adventure! Thanks for reading, kg

Victoria on Dwellable