From Tea Time to Night Time

What was left of the Spicy Salmon Tower when I remembered to take a picture.

The Victoria Legislative Building on a beautiful May afternoon

The High Tea at the Empress Hotel (we were hungry so we took a couple of items  off the plate before we took the picture). It was delicious!

The scent of roses filled the air

The Legislative Building Rotunda. A spectacular restoration!

The Queen in Her Glory

This tree on the lawn of the Legislative Building was really quite something.

The stained glass in the Legislative Building is quite lovely,  and there is a lot of it!

Nobody loves a beautiful barroom more than Kim and I! Victoria’s Bard and Banker delivered.

And also delivered on the afternoon’s martinis…

Quite the architecture in Victoria’s Old Town district.

The Guild was a beautiful bar in Victoria.

The housemade potato chips, which we did not order but they plunked  in front of us, deserved to be eaten. And they were…

The site of our ticket purchase for The Whale Watch of The Century. It was so great.

The harbor in Victoria.

Seaplanes are not only not unusual, they are a part of the landscape and part of everyday travel in British Columbia.

A Great Blue Heron has found his evening perch.

We are going to be a day behind in our blog, but that’s OK. Helps us relive how great the day before was, right? I love Victoria. What a beautiful city, with historic buildings, 50s and 60s iconic construction, fabulous gardens and great public spaces.

And the Empress Hotel, with its tea.

We had gone over the moon with the whale watch (previously described by Kim), and we almost canceled the Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel because what we  REALLY wanted to do was eat some fish n chips at redfishbluefish (that came later), but we agreed we needed to go. So glad we did because it was a wonderful tradition, with delicious little finger sandwiches and bite-size yummies. We, of course, added champagne to ours (making the tea an aside), but there was no way we could possibly finish all of it. The Empress Hotel, even while undergoing renovations, is a beautiful, stately and classy lady, much like the Queen herself, we were not disappointed. The only disappointment: While we didn’t wear heels, gloves, hose and hats, we also didn’t wear sweatpants and flipflops, which we thought were not allowed, and we dressed for the occasion as best we could. Others did not. But there was a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter who were from Victoria who sat next to us, and it was the granddaughter’s first time at The Tea. It was delightful hearing tidbits of their conversation.

In our sugar coma (which we have not experienced in at least three months), we staggered back to Hotel Rialto, changed out of tea clothes and into pedestrian wear, and ventured out for a tour of Victoria’s pubs. They have several, and we checked them out — Banker and Bard, The Guild, The Iris Pub — all with this incredible architecture and lighting that made the walk from the entrance to the outside porch a beautiful trip.

Have we mentioned that the weather is INCREDIBLE?? Crystal blue skies, low humidity, temps in 50s and 60s. My, my. The daylight hours here approach 16 in early May. The sun rises at 5:40 and sets close to 9 pm, making the shank of the day last for hours, which in drinkin’ man’s terms, means a very long time!!

We stepped into this modern-day bar toward the end of our trek, which by this time we needed to some food, and ordered some sort of spicy raw salmon tower on top of a flash-fried rice and sesame cake that was just about the best thing I have ever eaten. Spicy and sweet, flavorful. Yumbola. Sure that’s not the last time I will be using that term for food in these parts. (That picture posted at the beginning for whatever reason, but you get the idea.)

Then back to Hotel Rialto and off to bed, resting to begin another great day…