In Victoria

The capital of British Columbia is a long commute away from the South of Vancouver. After a night at Walmart we drive at 5.50am to a park and ride and take a 15 minutes bus to the ferry port in Tsawwassen. The crossing is an hour and a half to Swartz Bay, then it’s 50 minutes of bus to Victoria. When we’re finally there we go for brunch to Jam, a great coffee shop with amazing food in huge portions. It’s so good that we go back the next day. The capital is beautiful: old bricks, no skyscrapers, a quaint Chinatown, a castle, a little harbour and a beautiful and imposing parliament. A walk through pretty residential streets and we reach the southern tip of the city. It’s where the Trans-Canada highway 1 begins to go all the way to the East of the country. It’s also where we can see all the mountains of the Olympic peninsula. We stay at an Airbnb in a cute house and on Sunday we avoid the rain by going to the Robert Bateman’s gallery (a Canadian wildlife painter), to the shops and to a pub. Even with the long commute it’s well worth visiting for two days and one night.