Vancouver and Victoria

Our trip to the Northwest of America has begun with a rather token three nights in Vancouver and Victoria. We arrived at the luxurious Fairmont Waterfront in Vancouver in mid-afternoon on Monday after a sleepless 20 hours of travel. But realising that we would be leaving to catch the ferry to Victoria early the next morning we set out to explore the nearby area of Gastown despite the rain. It was the early port area, centred around the Hudson's Bay Company building. After some years of neglect it was revitalised in the 1970s and is now a vibrant tourist district, reminiscent of The Rocks in Sydney.

We were fortunate to choose Porto Italian Restaurant for dinner, though our main criterion for choosing it was that it offered an early bird special rate, suiting us well as we basically wanted to sleep as early as possible. As it turned out it was a very pleasing restaurant offering an excellent seafood soup, Cipollini, like a bouillabaisse, and a maple syrup crusted salmon.

The next morning we got up early in order to get on the bus to our ferry to Vancouver Island. The whole trip - bus, ferry, bus - was much longer than we had

anticipated and we arrived at the even more luxurious Empress Hotel about 1pm, having left at 8.30 in the morning. Although we sailed past picturesque islands we didn't see much of them as there was a heavy thunder storm.

The Empress Hotel has the castle-like structure popular with grand Canadian hotels, but otherwise very reminiscent of The Carrington in Katoomba, though on a grander scale. The hotel is set in a lovely garden and faces directly onto the harbour.

We revived ourselves with a very expensive High Tea ($65 per person), in a room remarkably similar in style to the Carrington dining room. We enjoyed the three layer afternoon tea of ribbon sandwiches, scones and tiny cakes. To compensate for this extravagant mid-afternoon feast we had a cheap but delicious bowl of chowder for dinner, after wandering around the old port area.

The next day we took a bus trip to the Butchart Gardens, created n the 1930s on the site of a limestone quarry. It attracts large crowds but is extensive enough to cope. We were fortunate that the rain had cleared and we had sunny weather. We had a simple lunch there and then took the bus back to Victoria.

In the afternoon we explored Chinatown, in the early twentieth century the second largest in North America. It is now quite modest but still lively. For dinner we went to a restaurant opposite the hotel, whose best feature is the view overlooking the harbour.