Torching Victoria?

Longtime followers of this blog may have noted that October 29, 2009 was a fifth Thursday.  So it is my duty to report what I was up to on that day (albeit a week late)...

The final week of October 2009 was also my fifth of six semi-forced vacation weeks.  I've spent parts of those previous vacation weeks in Illinois, eastern Washington, central Idaho, and New Mexico, so I needed to continue the trend of getting out of town, which I did by traveling to Victoria, BC where I already had lodging courtesy of my mom and her Administrative Professional's conference.  Victoria was the first and only place I'd visited outside of the United States for almost 30 years.  My grandma took my sister, Kristin, and I there a few times while we were in Port Angeles visiting during our summer vacations from school.  During those trips we took in all of the kid friendly tourist attractions including the Royal London Wax Museum, Miniature World, Pacific Undersea Gardens, and the Royal BC Museum.  We also made sure to stop at Rogers' Chocolates to pick up treat to take home to my grandpa.

This time around I didn't have to go all the way to Port Angeles to get to Victoria; there is a passenger only ferry, aptly named the Victoria Clipper, that makes one round trip from Seattle each day this time of year.  I didn't find there was much to see from the ferry but it was clean, comfortable, and only took 2 hours and 45 minutes one way.  My mom was waiting for me when I arrived in Victoria and from there we set out to explore the downtown and window shop.  We were surprised to find that the city's Chinatown (second oldest to San Francisco) only spans about one city block.  I got up very early to catch the ferry and it was especially cold that day so after we had dinner at The Noodle Box we decided to go back to the Empress and watch the World Series.

Thursday morning my mom had her conference so I slept in.  I left the Empress in the late morning and went for a nice long walk.  Kristin arrived via seaplane in the early evening and I met her at the dock.  By then my mom's conference had finished for the day so the three of us walked to Sen Zushi where we enjoyed a nice sushi dinner and the company of our close family trio.

It turned out that the last day I was in Victoria coincided with the arrival of the Olympic torch for the Vancouver 2010 winter games.  Kristin and I watched the torch arrival ceremony from the grass in front of the Parliament building.  There were brief speeches by a dozen or so people including the British Columbia Premier and the Canadian Prime Minister (both of whom were heckled).  We stood in the crowd beside the Premier's opponent and a long jumper from Canada's 2004 Paralympic team.  After the ceremony concluded and the 106-day torch relay began, Kristin insisted that we revisit Miniature World which I unenthusiastically agreed to.  As expected, it wasn't as neat as I had remembered from my childhood visits but I appreciated the Canadian history lesson that I had previously overlooked and the work of whomever assembled each of the tiny scenes.

My mom had an afternoon break from her conference so we had a late lunch at Nautical Nellie's before I had to catch my ferry back to Seattle.  The trip back was a bit rougher than the one coming up and I had to go through US Customs twice (once in Victoria and again in Seattle) but overall I have no complaints about the Clipper.

Mom, thanks again for sharing your Victoria adventure with your "twins" ;)