It'll Be Alright: Seattle/Vancouver Oct 2011

Day 1 -

We checked out of the Delta hotel in Victoria. We found a yummy place for breakfast called Mo:Le. It was very good. Lisa had some sort of mushroom bacon scramble and I had huevos rancheros. No offense to my parents, but this was the best huevos rancheros I have had. After breakfast we headed towards Butchart Gardens. This is north of Victoria on the way to the ferry at Swartz Bay. We took the back way to the gardens because for some reason the Garmin didn't want to take the normal way. We still got there though. The gardens were gorgeous. There were several areas: a sunken garden, which was set that way because the garden was built on a quarry, a rose garden, a Japanese garden, an Italian garden, and a couple more random areas. We really liked some of the random areas. There were a couple of spots with redwood trees, I liked those, and Lisa liked the area around a little red barn that had a bunch of big colorful flowers.

Sunken Garden

Lisa and the pretty flowers

Redwoods north of California

After the gardens, we had heard that there were some wineries in the area. We drove by 3-4 of them and they were all closed for the season. We decided to head towards Swartz Bay and check it out. We left the gardens fairly early and our ferry reservation was at 5:00. As we were driving to Swartz Bay, there were a bunch of signs that told us to follow to the ferry, so kept following. All of a sudden we were at the checkin for the ferry. Not a lot of warning, at least not that we could see. It was about 2:30 and our reservation was for 5:00. The lady at the checkin said we could try and get on the 3:00, but she could not promise it. We got in line and waited for the line to start loading. They started at about 10 til 3:00, and got to our line. We started moving up and then would stop. A little more, and then stop. We got to a spot where they could have made us wait until the next ferry, but then we moved on a little further. We ended up making it on the ferry. We were one of the last cars in the very back of the ferry. This was about an hour and a half ride, so we had some time. I stood outside most of the time playing with our camera. I was hoping to see a whale, but did not see one.

Lighthouse from the ferry

We made it to the destination and made it off the ferry no problem. Lisa was a little worried about how us foreigners would handle the ferries, but it is a very efficient system that we had no problems with. Downtown Vancouver was about 30 minutes from the ferry. The traffic was terrible. Vancouver has this system where they have signal lights above the lanes to tell you if you can use it or not. They change depending on traffic and time of day. This sounds like a good idea, but that was a long time ago. They now have too many cars in the area and need more lanes. It took quite a while to get to downtown. We got checked in to our hotel, and then went to dinner.

We found a sushi place called Miku. Holy cow! This was amazing. We got there and they sat us outside because the dining room with reservations was full. This was a Thursday night and they were full. It wasn't too bad outside, but they had big floor heaters. They were not on and it took a couple of guys to come out and start them, but it worked. We were nice and warm after they got them started. The menu was a little intimidating, but our waitress was great. She walked us through, gauged our sense of adventure, which was fairly low. We started with a sashimi salad. Wow, this was amazing. There was one issue, neither of us had eaten a salad with chop sticks. And come to find out, Lisa was not the best with chop sticks. She got it figured out though. For some reason, I had the urge for sake. I asked for a recommendation and we ordered some sake to share. I don't know what kind it was, but it was very good. One of the cool parts was they brought out a tray with a whole bunch of different sake cups and we got to pick our cups. This was a nice touch. Next we ordered a couple of rolls, and a couple of sashimi pieces. I am not going to attempt to tell you what was in the rolls, but the sashimi pieces were aburi style. This meant that they were raw, but were torched or broiled very briefly on the top. It gave the raw fish bite and very interesting taste and texture. Very good stuff. The sushi at home will never be the same. We ended with a blueberry coconut tart with blueberry lavender sorbet. A very good desert. This was a fantastic eating experience. The best part was the service. Our waitress was great. The manager came over to our table several times. All of the servers were friendly and explained all of the food. We talked about going back every day we were in Vancouver. Yummy.