Oh Canada!
We just took a quick family vacation up to Victoria, BC to celebrate our anniversary. I have been going there off and on since I was a kid and it’s a lot of fun. This is a nice, easy vacation from the JBLM area. Just a two hour drive to the ferry (if you take the Coho – you can take your car on that one) and then a 90 minute ferry ride. We did a package deal through the Coho and paid $499 for the ferry ride round trip and two nights at the hotel. Pretty good deal! See all the pics I took on my Facebook page, the link to the album is: https://goo.gl/uc3CBx. Here’s a little about what we did…I am going to split this up into a few posts or it would just be way too long…
DAY ONE:
Waiting for the ferry
With kids in tow, we drove up to Port Angeles to catch the Coho Ferry (about a two hour drive from the JBLM area). We did this so we could take our car over with us and make getting around with little ones easier. They LOVED the ferry ride and it was fairly quick, only about 90 minutes. They also had food aboard, not the greatest, but it was perfect for lunch for this kids.
After going through Canadian customs with my lovely four year old sitting in the back saying that she wasn’t my kid…we headed over to the hotel. Yes, she sat in the back saying ‘we’re not your children’ over and over again after the customs officer asked if both kids belonged to both of us…it was just awesome! Anyway, back to the hotel…we chose to stay at the Hotel Grand Pacific because of its kid friendliness. At check in they handed each of our little ones a welcome bag with fun stuff for them, it was pretty neat. They have a kid pool that’s only two feet deep which the kids loved, but it was freezing! I really wish they would have turned up the temp! Out front they hand out duck food so you can feed the resident ducks living in the pond. That was a blast! They had little babies and they all ate out of our hands! They also offered a kid friendly high tea which we took advantage of on our last day.
After all of that, we walked down to the docks and hopped onto one of the Water Taxis and headed over to Fisherman’s Wharf. This ferry ride was a lot of fun for both us and the kids. Riding in a tiny boat in the harbor with all the boat traffic and sea planes taking off and landing constantly was really fun to watch.
Once we arrived at Fisherman’s Wharf, we walked around a bit and looked at all the floating homes and businesses. Everything is on a float tied up to a dock, kinda neat. These homes weren’t house boats, they were actual homes built on a float. Yes, they were smaller, but most of them were two stories and pretty pricey!
We grabbed some dinner from the restaurants on the floats, hotdogs and poutine from Grilligan’s for the kiddos and sushi from Rockn’Rolls for the hubby and I and ate on the dock in the sunshine and enjoyed people watching. Then over to Jackson’s Ice Cream and we got HUGE ice cream cones then headed back on the Water Taxi to the hotel. Hit up the pool for a bit and then hit the sack!
See all the pictures I took on my Facebook page, here is the link to the album: https://goo.gl/uc3CBx
Day two adventure to follow!