Today we were on our own for breakfast – we had juice and Ezekial muffins with almond butter, which is our regular workaday breakfast. Then we just lazed around the room reading until about 11:15. We had amassed some leftovers and were going to have those for lunch, so I thought that maybe we could take a walk before lunch. I suggested this to Lis and she said “Yes, let’s go to the petting zoo.” What an excellent plan – so off to the Beacon Hill Park Children’s Farm we went.

The Children’s Farm is one of our very favorite places in Victoria. The B&B is just about 3 blocks from Beacon Hill Park, and it turns out the Children’s Farm is located on the side that’s near the B&B, so we were there in about 15 minutes. It was another gorgeous day, though the wind was up today making things feel chillier. The Children’s Farm has lots of peacocks and ducks and chickens and a big homely turkey, plus a pot bellied pig and a miniature horse and some donkeys and alpacas and sheep – and then the main attraction for us, the goat enclosure. I wandered around taking pictures for a while, and then noticed that I had lost Lis – she was in the goat area, petting a baby goat and conversing with an adorable 5 year old boy named Nicholas.

We spent about an hour or so with the goats. One of the great things about this goat petting zoo area is that the goats are calm. The other great thing is that if you hang out there long enough you will eventually have a baby goat in your lap. I had a little boy goat named Tosh and Lis had a little girl goat named Taylor. I also spent quite a long time with a little boy goat named Henry alternately eating my hat, munching my sunglasses, and nuzzling my cheek. Nicholas came and chatted us up every now and then (when we seemed to have interesting goats around us, it seemed – Henry also gave his hat a thorough going over). It was really a great time – we always have a marvelous time at the Children’s Farm. And, we actually got pictures this time – sometimes we get too involved with the goats and forget to take pictures. But we’ve got pictures of us with goats, and several painfully adorable pictures of mamas and babies, and babies asleep in a pile – I can’t wait to post them (damn that forgotten USB cable!!).

But, we were getting hungry – time to head back for lunch. The ease with which we got to and from the Children’s Farm made us decide to try to go back at least a couple more times. This is another fantastic thing about this B&B – it is so close to such great walking and such great views. Definitely my new favorite place to stay in Victoria.

We ate our lunch on our tiny little balcony and then decided to drive out to one of the local “Cideries” to taste some apple cider – if we could find one that we liked as well as the hard cider we had for dinner on our first night, we would buy some. Initially we were going to go to a place called Merridale Cider, because the pamphlet we had from there said they had lots of tours and things to do, but they closed at 4pm and it was already 2 and they were an hour away. So we went to the closer one called Sea Cider. There wasn’t really anything to do there other than taste the cider, but they are beautifully situated looking out over the water. We sat on the deck in the sun and tasted 4 different ciders, and eventually chose to buy a bottle of one called Kings & Spies. There was another very unusual cider called RumRunner that we almost got – it is aged in rum barrels – you can really taste the rum in it, and it’s really, really interesting. Ultimately, though, we decided it tasted too alcohol-y for us and went with the other. They were both really excellent, though.

For dinner we went to a Japanese restaurant downtown called Koto. We each had a miso soup and a salad, and then split an entree of tempura and ginger pork. While we were there these skater-dude guys came in and sat at the sushi bar. There were four of them, and we were a bit apprehensive that they were going to be loud and annoying, but they were the cutest skater dudes ever. They had interesting conversations and made funny jokes and were really quite delightful.

After dinner I was tired and wanted to head straight back to the room, but Lis wanted to walk around a bit, so we did. We looked at some restaurant menus and checked out a candy store, and then went in to a souvenir store because I need a new Victoria t-shirt (my old one is threadbare and ratty now). The young man and woman working the store were very cute and chatty and told us stories about some of their cruise ship customers, and soccer, and where she was from in Ontario, and the time she went to New York and how great she thinks New York is, and her recent cruise to Alaska on the Volendam – it was very fun, though I worried we wouldn’t ever get out of there. Eventually I got my new shirt ($10 on sale) and we were on our way.

Back at the B&B we chatted with Binners and Edward for a bit, and made a dinner date with them for Sunday – we’re going to a local Italian eatery to listen to Klezmer music – how fun is that!

Lis: We’ve never made a dinner date with the owner of a B&B we’ve stayed at before, but we find Edward and Binners so enjoyable that we thought we’d ask. Mary said, “Are you allowed to have dinner with your guests?”

Edward said, “Oh boy, an invitation!”

Binners said, “Edward, you don’t know that!”

Mary said, “No, that is what we’re leading up to.”

Binners said, “It’s our own damn house, we can do whatever we want!” Then she said, “Which guests were you suggesting we have dinner with?”

I said, “The guests after us,” and we all laughed. They are a very cute couple.

We are going to be the only guests here for our entire stay, which I have to admit, is kind of fun. There were supposed to be other guests in the downstairs suite, but they cancelled. Apparently people are cancelling vacations to Victoria because of the Swine Flu. Mary: Go figure…

We had our B&B breakfast this morning, and it was really good (I think Lis mentioned in her post this morning that it was smelling pretty damn fine). We had a fruit cup of oranges, grapefruit and pineapple (I’m not a huge grapefruit fan, but the orange and pineapple were good) that had no sugar so Lis could eat hers. Edward also brought to the table a small pitcher of cranberry-apple juice, a carafe of decaf coffee for me, and a teapot for Lis’ special throat tea she bought on Tuesday in Port Townsend. Next came a dairy free muffin that was truly divine – it was dark and moist, like carrot cake or zucchini bread. I wished I could have had a second one, but I knew that more food was coming. The main course was oven-puffed mushroom omelet (I forgot to ask what that meant, and couldn’t find a good web site to link to, but scanning the Google search results seemed to indicate that it’s an omelet baked in the oven like a souffle) and three strips of bacon. After serving the main course Edward asked if they could join us (of course they could), and they sat down with their coffee and again we just chatted together for about two hours. We really enjoy these innkeepers very much.

We didn’t have much planned for today – we wanted to go to the bank and exchange some currency, we wanted to go to the health food store to get some Ezekiel muffins and juice for breakfast, and we wanted to go for a walk along the path next to Dallas Road. And, of course, we’d need to feed ourselves. Our first stop was the bank we’d noticed in the Cook Street Village area yesterday. There we received two pieces of bad news – the US dollar was down, and we’d have to pay a $3 fee for the exchange. The teller told us about the poor exchange rate by saying “Our Canadian dollar has gone up,” and I jokingly responded with “Dang you Canadians and your dollar!” At which he actually got his back up a little bit and said (trying to be friendly and joking also but obviously really a touch peeved) “Well, it’s not our fault.” I said “I know, I know,” which seemed to mollify him a bit. Then he said something like “You guys had a president that we didn’t like much up here.” We assured him that we weren’t big fans of that president ourselves (Lis: actually, I believe my words were, “We didn’t like him at all!” which, for me, is actually an understatement), and then he seemed to be our friend again. But I learned my lesson to be much more careful about such things.

After the aforementioned International Incident, it was time for lunch. We decided to go to Spinnaker’s, one of our favorite places in Victoria because they have the best fish and chips ever. We had heard that their quality had gone down a bit, but we are happy to report that we did not experience any drop off – the fish and chips were top notch as usual. I was also very pleased that I was able to get us all the way to Spinnaker’s and back without having to consult a map or turn on the GPS (OK, at the very end I was feeling a little unsure and thought we’d need the GPS, but by the time Lis had it up and running, I had figured things out and we were at our destination).

The weather was gorgeous – sunny and about 70 degrees – and we ate our meal and looked out over the Outer Harbour and watched the tide come in. The other patrons were primarily older to elderly well-dressed, well-coifed straight couples, and casual-Friday looking business type guys who had their Blackberrys in their hands the whole time – they weren’t using them, just holding them and absently fiddling with them. I thought that was kind of funny, though we have very little room to be amused since one or the other of us is usually pulling out the IPhone every few minutes for some reason or other. At least there is still a reason, though – we haven’t devolved yet to just absently fondling the damn thing.

After lunch we went to the store, and we did need the GPS for this trip. However, for the first time, it failed us completely – had us turn on to a totally residential street and then said “Arriving Planet Organic on left.” Of course, we were nowhere near a store of any kind, so we pulled over and handled it the 20^th century way – pulled out our Victoria city map and plotted a course. We got to the store without incident and were also able to get ourselves back without GPS or map – we are very pleased with how familiar we are becoming with Victoria, and not just the downtown/Inner Harbour area either. Soon we will be like locals 🙂

We came back to the room and rested for a bit, and then took our walk. It was a gorgeous, spectacular day – late afternoon, completely sunny, Olympics visible in the distance, sun glinting off the water – really, truly, awesomely scenic. I took several pictures, some of which turned out pretty well – but I can’t share them here, because I forgot to bring the USB cable for the camera, and the USB cable for the IPhone won’t fit. So no pictures until we get home, unless I take a few more IPhone ones. Very sad, as I enjoy moving my pictures over at the end of the day and uploading them to our Picasa web album – ah, well… Lis: Very, very sad, as I do not enjoy handing the IPhone to Mary every 5 minutes so she can take a picture.

For dinner we went to a Jamaican restaurant downtown called The Reef – it was really good. They brought us some Johnnycakes to start with which were SENSATIONAL – maybe the best bread I’ve ever had – I could have just eaten those for dinner. I had a Jamaican stout called Dragon Stout, and Lis had a fruity rum drink with an umbrella in it, and I had jerk chicken with my Caesar salad, and Lis had a tilapia dish, and there was reggae music, and we felt very Caribbean. Plus it was all very good and the waitress was really friendly and cute. And, we again got back to the B&B all by ourselves – all in all, a pretty excellent day.

Had breakfast at the B&B this morning – it was really good for me, but they didn’t handle Lis’ special diet as well. This was partly on them and partly on us, I’d say. The breakfast served to the non-special dieters was a bowl of granola and yoghurt with strawberries on top, followed by a scone, followed by an egg/crepe thingy – all of which was quite yummy. The Lis no-dairy version was the strawberries minus the yoghurt and granola, and scrambled eggs with ham. The part that is on us is that we only told them that Lis couldn’t have dairy – we didn’t mention the part about how she can’t have sugar, primarily because we don’t usually run across sugar for breakfast. However, the strawberries were in a syrup, which of course is mostly sugar, so Lis couldn’t really eat them – just had a couple of the least sugary ones. The part that is on them is that they should have been able to replace the scone with something, rather than just take it away. And the part that is on us is that Lis is really picky about eggs (it’s very easy for her to be grossed out by them if they’re not cooked just right) and doesn’t really like ham. So the upshot was that I walked away from the table full and Lis walked away hungry. We tried to run her by McDonald’s on the way to Port Angeles, but we missed the end of breakfast by about 15 minutes. So she had a cereal bar and cashews in the car.

We got to Port Angeles in plenty of time for the ferry, but not so early that we had to sit around for eons waiting to board. Once on the ship, we went up to the forward observation room where we had a good view of the crossing. The weather was much improved today but still a little chilly and morning-cloudy. But, by the final third of the trip the sun had come out and the temperature had warmed, and so we went out on the forward deck. Looking ahead we could see Victoria and the hills of Vancouver Island, looking back we could see Washington state and the Olympic Mountains in all their glory, and the sun was warm and the wind was down – it was truly lovely. There are few things as transcendently awesome as being out on the deck of a ship in glorious scenery and beautiful weather, even a plain ol’ no-nonsense gal like the MV Coho.

There were two cruise ships in port (Carnival Splendor and Royal Caribbean Mariner of the Seas) so the Inner Harbour area was pretty crowded and a bit of a pain to navigate through. However, as we have seen before, once we were about 5 blocks away from the Empress Hotel, things cleared up significantly. By the time we got to Market Square, only about 10 blocks from the Empress, everything was pretty quiet. We had lunch at Green Cuisine, but they didn’t have the regular Fruit Crumble dessert that they ALWAYS have and is the main reason we go there, so we were pretty disappointed (especially Lis – she was having a rough food day).

We had a couple hours to kill until we could check in at the B&B we will be staying at in Victoria (we have never stayed a week at a B&B – we are a bit apprehensive, as we like B&B’s but also grow tired of having to socialize with people. However, we are only having the breakfast part of the B&B on the first morning (tomorrow), so we’re expecting it might be more like staying in a boutique hotel.) so we drove around the island a bit and ended up driving along Beach Drive/Dallas Road on the east side of the island, which is way scenic. We got out and walked around for a while on this cool point with some wonderful tide pools and rock formations – that turned out to be about 5-10 blocks from the B&B. We hope to walk there a lot more during our stay.

The place we are staying is called Binners Bed & Breakfast. “Binners” is actually the name of our proprietress. She let us in and sat us down at the dining room table and we just chatted and compared travel notes and told stories and laughed for the next 2 hours or so. Her husband Edward came home about halfway through this time and joined us – we had a really great time and enjoyed them both very much – so much so that we completely lost track of time and pretty soon it was 7pm or so and time to try to find something to eat. First, though, Binners and Edward showed us to our room – they offered us an upgrade to the 2-room Cascadia Suite, but we found that we liked the light and feel of the smaller Harmony Room that we originally booked. They showed us all around the room, showing us where everything was and how everything worked – we appreciated the attention and the thoroughness.

The place itself is very different from the James House – a regular modern house in a regular modern neighborhood, as opposed to a grand old Victorian mansion. From the outside it doesn’t look very imposing at all, but the room is very comfortable and the amenities are much better – there is a little kitchenette-type area in the room with fridge, microwave, sink, coffee maker, kettle and toaster – at James House there was no way to have a cup of coffee or tea after hours. As we’ve often noted before, you do frequently have to sacrifice amenities in some of the grander older settings.

We headed out for dinner at about 7:30-7:45pm – very hipster cosmopolitan for a couple of dinner-at-5:30 gals like us (we can’t wait until we’re old enough for those Early Bird Specials we’ve heard tell of). There is a little neighborhood village area a few blocks from the B&B with some nice looking eateries, but they were crowded and loud and we almost punted and ate at Subway, but then we saw that the Pizzeria wasn’t too bad and had a table open, and so we ate there. The waiter was a touch attitudinal (I think I offended him by asking what beer he had on tap and then not wanting to order any – they had an ale and a pilsner, whereas I’m more of a porter/hefeweizen/stout girl) but the food was good and everybody else there was very nice. We had a hard cider instead of beer or wine and it was really good – very much hit the spot.

Then back to the inn, where we unpacked and hit the hay – Lis is snoring away as I type, and I hope to be snoring away myself as soon as I’m done here.

Rather than trying to get to Port Angeles in time for the 2pm ferry to Victoria, which we have done before but not without a fair amount of stress, as we are not girls who can easily get organized and out of the house at an early hour, we decided to drive to Port Townsend today and stay overnight, and then go on to Port Angeles in the morning. Good thing, too, as it turns out the 2pm ferry to Victoria is now the 12:45pm ferry to Victoria.

We had a pleasant morning, got out in decent time (for us), and had a pleasant, uneventful drive, alternately Learning Spanish Like Crazy and listening to This American Life and Fresh Air (brainwashed liberals that we are). We arrived at the B&B about 3pm and were able to check in right away. I had thought that we might then spend the afternoon and evening kicking around Port Townsend, but the weather today was a bit windy and cool and trying to rain, so we went to our room for a bit to unwind and then walked down to an Asian Noodle restaurant for dinner. We did walk around a little bit, but the weather wasn’t very conducive and most things were closed, so there wasn’t much to do. We did pop into a cute little herb store where Lis got some tea and a tincture for a tired throat, and Lis went and looked around a candle store (I had to wait outside as the scents in those kinds of places make my sinuses explode). The restaurant was cute and the food was good. Afterwards we headed back to our room at the B&B.

The B&B is called The James House. The literature in the room (which I liked a lot because it talked about the history of the area starting with the local Native populations and working through to the present day) says that the house was originally a mansion built in 1889 by Francis Wilcox James for his wife Mary. Mr. James apparently “made his fortune by making shrewd investments in the late 1800’s,” which I took as code for “gouged and ripped off the local citizenry like mad.” I did a quick Google search to test my theory, but didn’t come up with anything about the original Mr. James. However, I did find this cool photo of the inn.

Regardless of how he amassed his fortune, I will say that Mr. James had very nice taste – the inn is very lovely. Most of it seems to be original, and is in very good condition. There is lots of beautiful woodwork throughout the house – fir, redwood, oak, walnut, cherry – including the staircase, described in the literature as “the finest in Port Townsend [with] newel posts, spindles and banisters of wild cherry brought from the Virginias, around Cape Horn, as raw logs with the carving done here on the property.” It really is a spectacular staircase, but not overly ornate. The whole house is done very well – clearly a restored Victorian but not of the overly frilly variety that one often meets with on the bed and breakfast scene.

After dinner we retired to our room and did what we often do on vacation – surfed the web. Though now, with the addition of our new IPhone, our surfing bounced between the lap top and the IPhone. What was really cool is that when I attached the IPhone to the laptop via the phone’s USB cable, the laptop treated it as a camera and I was able to transfer the photos I had taken on it just like any other digital camera. Here are some of the pictures we took – pretty good for a camera phone, I’d say (needless to say, we LOVE our new IPhone).

Well, better hit the hay and get ready for the final leg of the trip tomorrow – looking forward to our breakfast:)