Jenn's Doings: Victoria Day 3 and Day 4

As our weekend wound down, the last two days we did less it seems. The hotel guy asked us when we left if we did everything we wanted in Victoria and what we did, I thought,"Its probably quicker to tell what we didn't."

So day 3 was Sunday. The Highlight of the day was High Tea at the Empress Hotel. The Empress, as you can undoubtedly see, is an impressive hotel. It's old. It's historic. And it's huge. It was designed by Francis Rattenbury, who coincidentally, is the same guy who designed the Parliament building. The hotel was built in 1904 originally, but has sense had misc wings added or renovated. All shades of dignitaries and celebs stay at the Empress. This dignitary couldn't afford a cupboard in the Empress. Some day maybe...

Empress at night. Ignore the stupid signs on the fence to the left, they were having a field hockey tournament on the main street.

The sun shines brightly on the Empress.

The Empress is probably best known for its classic Victorian afternoon tea service. I wasn't a huge fan of the idea of "tea" and have shunned it many times in the past when Blueberry has recommended it. But being that I'm more mature now, I figured I'd give it a try. And boy was I glad I did.

When we entered the Tea Room you could almost feel the Miss Manners vibe. If ever there was a time to pull out the world famous Wraspir Table Manners it was now. The MomUnit had taught me well.

Our first obstacle was to decide on a tea. Each guest could pick a tea flavor from a list of about 10. Us gals chose two tea types: The Empress Blend (supposedly the best) and one called Kai Lani or something like that - with hints of pineapple and orange.

The server, we'll call him Ray since that was his name. Was so polite and so exact with his manners, that I realized teasing with this guy, or my normal sarcasm would not be welcomed here.

They placed these white chocolate covered strawberries in front of us and almost immediately Seattle SIL asks, "Do we use our fork and knife with these?" I'm sure the right answer is Yes. But our table decided it was okay to use your hands with these little viddles. It'd be tricky to try to cut them with fork and knife.

Next the tea was served. Two pots of very HOT tea. Ray offered each of us individually a lump of sugar and then followed with some milk. We took it all. He poured the tea and left us to ooohhh and ahhh over the tea.

It was so damn good! Apparently the Empress Blend is a "second flush" I think he called it. When the tea leaves are first harvested those tea leave go to make ALL the tea. Then a second batch of leaves begin to grow and before they get very big they are harvested - thus a second flush.

Ray returned with the food. To say there was enough food to feed a small army is an understatement. Queen PopUp had expressed to us earlier to not eat a big breakfast because the food at the tea would be fantastic and a lot of it. I will never doubt her again.

The food consisted of small sandwiches (bottom level: Pork Pate, chicken curry, cucumber/horseradish, egg salad and smoked salmon), then fresh made scones and sweet cream with preserves, and finally dessert (top level: chocolate shells with mousse in them, lemon meringue, shortbread, little cakes with marzipan, and raspberry cheesecake dipped in white chocolate). So, um yah, we ate well.

And as you can tell we did a pretty good job at finishing off the food.

We had to finish the day off with a photo in our crab hats. I mean, what's a high tea without the obligatory photo in crazy crab hats.

(Notice the folks behind us to the right. They'll be important later in the story.)

We finished our tea, hefted ourselves out of our chairs and proceeded to find something new and fun to do that would require some walking off of said food. Seattle SIL and I headed to the Craigdarroch Castle, while Queen PopUp headed to miniature world.

The Craigdarroch (pronounced craig derrick) was built in the 1890's by a wealthy Victoria man named Robert Dunsmier. He died the year before it was completed so never got to live in the castle. His wife and 8 kids, however, did.

It was really hard to get good photos in the castle because it was dark and the flash just didn't do most of it justice. When you walk in you are immediate asked to Look UP. This is what you see.

87 stairs to the top of the castle. Thankfully during the tour you do it floor by floor and work your way up. There was no way I could climb 87 stairs after the lunch we had.

I totally stole this photo from their website, but it really shows all the amazing wood work that was throughout the castle.

The wood throughout the house was spectacular. All the wood panels and etc were shipped from Chicago and were the last items to be installed in the castle.

Inside all the rooms had your standard Victorian stuff. Items of that era. Most of the actual Dunsmier items had been auctioned off in the mid 1950's. The staff that wanted to restore the castle started collecting items for several years to add to the collection. Most, though, of what you see didn't belong to the family.

Still it was beautiful to see all the amazing artifacts. That piano there is a Steinway and was built in 1869. Craigdarroch

The bathroom amused me. There wouldn't be any long sits on that toilet that's for sure.

Craigdarroch, by the way, means "rocky oak place" - you never know when that'll be a Trivial Pursuit question.

You may have seen some of the castle in a few movies too. It was host to Little Women and Cats & Dogs - the two notable ones to me anywho.

Post castle gawking, we met up again with Queen PopUp and then walked around through misc streets of Victoria.

We ate at the BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT EVER! We stopped at a coffee shop after we met up to rest and get a cuppa Joe. I asked the barista where he'd go to dinner. He asked what I was hungry for and I said Italian. I barely got the word out when he said, "Pagliacci's." Now, the Pagliacci's here in Seattle is a pizza joint, so after confirming it wasn't we were sold.

This little hole in the wall was packed when we finally got there around 7pm. We were seated and were almost literally in the laps of the people around us. I'm still not sure who the wait staff served food here. There wasn't much room to move.

As we were looking through the menu, Queen PopUp leans to a young man to her left and says, "What are you eating?" She and he started chitchatting about the food etc. Turns out these folks were the people who were sitting behind us during High Tea (remember I pointed them out earlier). We started chatting with them and mentioned we were the women who put on the crab hats. They laughed and said they were JUST talking about us. Go figure.

After a very satisfying meal of tortellini and cream sauce, we couldn't not have dessert. Queen PopUp wanted tiramisu, but sadly they didn't have any. Instead the waitress suggested their checker board cake. White and chocolate cake - the white cake dredged in Amaretto and the chocolate dredged in dark rum. OMG...it was so good we just sat in silence taking it in.

Monday we woke, packed our bags and checked out. We had all day before the Clipper ride home so we arranged to have a Victoria City Bus tour. There wasn't anything overly fascinating on the tour, but it was worth it.We got to see a lot of the residential neighborhoods and some other places we hadn't seen.

By the end of the day, we were pooped. We had walked and walked and walked for three days straight. It was time to come home. We hopped on the Clipper and said goodbye to Victoria. I'll be back though. Victoria sent us off with a spectacular sunset.