Fresh off the boat in Victoria B.C.; an excess of polite wondering; extreme salubriousness at The Empress Fairmont; tiptoeing through tulips, around flower baskets and past the homeless and abject; marijuana debate; dinner at Il Terrazzo

After five days at sea, Roy and I were ready to disembark from HAL Westerdam and face the immigration process in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. We’d been extensively coddled during our 28-day cruise from Sydney; now we were going to be looked after by my cousin, Bradley, and his wife Ingrid, South Africans who emigrated to Canada over 30 years ago.

(Click here for the first of my five posts on that Westerdam cruise… but please remember to come back.)

There’s nothing better than having family or friends living abroad, and it’s clear we’re going to have a fabulous time being shown their neck of the woods, as Brad put it.

Brad and Ingrid had to wait outside – in glorious sunshine, fortunately – while we gnashed our teeth in the long immigration queue. A single official was on duty. This is Canada, famous for niceness and courtesy, so there was a lot of polite wondering going on ahead of and behind us. After about half an hour of little movement, a second and more energetic young man clocked in, and things started to happen.

One night in Victoria B.C.

To my delight, my cousins had booked rooms for the night at the Fairmont Empress – their favourite – to give us a chance to see a bit of Victoria.

All hail the Empress!

To my delight, Brad and Ingrid had booked us into Victoria’s most iconic accommodation, the Fairmont Empress. Opened in 1908, it’s especially famous for its afternoon high teas, and for weddings.

Seen around town in Victoria B.C.

The Empress is perfectly located right on the waterfront, on the fringe of the CBD. We walked around for a couple of hours to get a feel for the place. Admiring the hanging baskets that Victoria is famous for, I’m told this is just the start of spring, and the floral display will soon become even more impressive.

The hotel’s own massive display of thousands of tulips was gorgeous, and a tourist attraction in itself.

I slipped out for another stroll and a spot of shopping at Lululemon, two minutes’ walk from the hotel. As Vancouver is where entrepreneur Chip Wilson launched his spectacularly successful athleisure brand in 1998, it would have been rude not to buy something. (Right?)

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Is something rotten in Victoria B.C.?

Though downtown Victoria is beautiful and we were seeing the city at her sunny-day-in-spring best, Ingrid says it has gone somewhat downhill like so many other North American cities. As just one example, the iconic Hudson Bay department store, established in 1670, is in the death rattle of liquidation.

I usually like the smell of marijuana, especially Durban poison, but it’s less appealing today and in these circumstances. Canada legalised its recreational use back in October 2018, and was the first major industrialised country to do so.

We grew up being told that smoking weed was the thin end of the wedge, that it would lead to more destructive addictions. My opinion has changed over the years, influenced by the current narrative… that we evolved with cannabis, that it has wonderful analgesic and other benefits; that our bodies have endoreceptors for cannabinoid compounds. Hell, that we even produce these cannabinoids!

But now, seeing oblivious people are sprawled on the pavement, slumped in carts or hanging off public benches, more than one shaking violently in the throes of addiction, I feel less sure.

As for us, it’s just another day in Paradise, as we return to the extreme salubriousness that is the Fairmont Empress, complete with Nespresso machine and complimentary macarons.

Dinner at Il Terrazzo, Victoria B.C.

That evening, after a couple of the Empress’s specialty G&Ts on the sunny terrace (pictured somewhere above this) – blue, and no, I don’t exactly remember why – we walked to a nearby Italian that is Brad and Ingrid’s favourite in Victoria: Il Terrazzo.

The cannelloni was the most outrageously delicious pasta ever: a rich and tasty dish stuffed with pulled pork, sautéed savoy cabbage and more. Ingrid had the lamb rack, Roy the cassoulet and Brad the osso bucco.

And if these pics don’t get you salivating, you’re either a born vegetarian/vegan or, possibly, not even human.

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Up next?

Brad and Ingrid take us to their wonderful home on Gabriola Island, complete with a resident pair of nesting eagles, moss-covered forests and more venerable elder cedars than you can shake a stick at.