Vancouver Island, pot and potage

We took off to Vancouver Island for a few days late last week, ignoring the fact that two people had been found murdered on a popular walking trail there, in two separate incidents over the past week.  We weren't planning on hiking.  

We rented a car from Budget downtown, who engage in very aggressive 'upselling' - and when I googled it I found other reviews suggested the same experience.  Anyway, I took out some insurance cover I later found out I didn't need, and which cost 1.5 times the car rental cost.    I won't be doing that next time, in fact I'm looking for deals with other companies for our Rockies trip next week.

Anyway -we drove out to Tsawassen to get on the ferry to the Island.  Tsawassen was very easy to find - the roads are well signed here.   We got into a huge lineup of cars - we wondered how so many cars would fit on the ferry, large as it was.  But they all did.  The ferry is almost like a cruise ship (without cabins).  It had a buffet section, a cafeteria, a gift shop that sold clothes, business stations (but no wifi), a special lounge you had to pay extra for, televisions, kids play area, and lots of other comfortable seating areas.  It has two levels for passengers, two or three for cars.

Most importantly this trip travels through some of the most beautiful scenery in BC, winding in and around little islands covered in fir trees (or other very northern hemisphere trees), some with smoke rising up from the chimneys of little wooden cabins, some with small towns - a collection of little wooden cabins.  You could see the forest streams through the trees, on some of them - the ferry went that close.  Perhaps the serenity and beauty of the trip was enhanced by the fragrant wafts of pot, from the joint being smoked by a man sitting just downwind of me on the deck (its legality in Canada is 'ambiguous' according to Wikipedia).  Most of the trip we are travelling along the US (Washington) coast.  My phone sent me a welcome to the USA message en route.

An hour and a half of cruising, and we arrived in Sidney, Vancouver Island and drove 30 minutes to the capital of British Columbia, Victoria.  This is a beautiful old harbour city, but small, with no big buildings and lots of old buildings, like Parliament House and the Fairmont Empress Hotel.  It reminded me a little of Ballarat.  It takes great pride in its 'Britishness' but this seems to have been toned down a little since my last visit 20 years ago, where I remember much more prominent Union Jacks and 'high tea' events.

We went to the Royal Museum of British Columbia, which was excellent - Angus declared it the second best museum he's ever been too (surpassed only by the Melbourne Museum).  We learned about the first nations people of the area and how they used to live, the logging and fishing industries, and what it was like to live in a town there 100 years ago.  Great interactive displays.

There's also a great park called Beacon Hill Park, which, like Bunny Hollow, reminds me (though I've never been there) of what a Heath might be like in London.  It's called Beacon Hill Park.  It has massive boulders, green soft grassy knolls, daffodils everywhere, and people just sitting in isolation at odd spots around the park, hidden in nooks and crannies created by boulders, reading or studying.

I could tell it was a government town:  I eavesdropped on a conversation at breakfast in a coffee shop, which was all about which fund to take and return some funds from - consolidated revenue (or CRF, as they referred to it), or some other source?   Brought back memories....but without any sense of missing it!    And many of the people at the restaurant at dinner (which wasn't that memorable, despite being a very popular spot - Pagliaccis) had a public service look about them.

To catch the ferry home we drove a few hours north on the island, up to Nanaimo.  (It's helpful to bear in mind Vancouver Island is as big as the UK - it isn't like Stradbroke Island, as I'd naively thought before planning the trip in any detail).  We passed through a gorgeous fishing town along the way - Cowichan Bay.  It's very small, and like some Irish seaside villages in appearance.  It is simply a collection of shops and houses spread along a road, which one approaches coming down a hill and round a bend, and suddenly it's there.  Drive one minute, and it's gone.  Many of the small, colourful clapboard dwellings are built over the water, and connected by a series of piers or boardwalks, where boats are also moored.

The town has a great cheese shop - Hilary's cheese, next door to an organic bakery.  We stopped there for lunch, where I had french cabbage soup with roquefort, and Angus had split pea soup.  We really enjoyed our lunch, on a grey and foggy day overlooking the sea and fishing boats in a warm, cosy little shop.   I bought some cheese, one made there by Hilary and one brie from Quebec, to take home.

Vancouver Island was very beautiful and I wish we could have explored more widely - to the surf coast, and the town of Tofino over there, for example.  But with limited time I decided that we can see wild surf beaches at home.