This had me laughing for days afterward. And now I can never look at a VW Bug in quite the same way.
Tag Archives: islands
Tea for two
Speaking of Canadian fall color, almost exactly two years ago I had the chance to stay at Victoria’s Empress Hotel, and see its climbing ivy in all its autumn glory. Both then and just recently, when the Tailor and I visited Victoria together, a major highlight of the visit was the Empress’s world-famous High Tea.
If dainty delicacies aren’t your thing, or you’d rather chug a thermos of coffee than sip tea out of bone china—well, I’d suggest spending your afternoon elsewhere. But for the Tailor and me, there was nothing cozier.
(And besides, the curry sandwiches are to die for.)
Celtic Colours
Well, okay, my visit missed the actual Celtic Colours music festival by a couple of days (sad but true). But even a short two days on Cape Breton gave me a nice taste of the Celtic heritage of the island—
—as well as a panorama of stunning autumn color, absolutely everywhere I looked.
If that’s not a good consolation prize, I don’t know what is.
A world where there are Octobers
“I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn’t it?”
—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
And I’m so glad my first visit to Prince Edward Island was an October one.
Even without the peak fall color everywhere, the island was easily one of the most beautiful, picturesque places I’ve ever seen. In fact, the gratuitous beauty got to be a running gag between my travel companion and me—with each new jaw-dropping vista, one of us would roll our eyes and sigh, “Jeez, I guess I’ll just look at another pretty scene…” and then laugh.
Actually, laughing about it was about the only way we could keep our sanity. It was all I could do not to abandon any attempt at sketching (because what puny drawing could ever hold a candle to the real thing?) and just burst into dumbfounded tears over the enormity of it all. Because all those October trees, and October fields, and October skies made for two days so perfect that no amount of careful painting could ever do them justice.
On island time
When my best friend Elizabeth came to visit last year, she told me she’d always wanted to visit the San Juan Islands. So we packed every bit of waterproof gear we had and headed north for a girls-only trip.
We spent a good chunk of our trip on various boats—
—which, even in spring’s constant cold drizzle, is the best way to see the islands (and their inhabitants!) in all their misty glory.
Still, even though we’d gladly risk pneumonia any day to catch a glimpse of an orca, it was wonderful to have a warm, cozy room to come back to at the end of the day.
We are landlubbers, after all.
Culture clash
You know, I stopped to sketch this guy (and suffered my least favorite sound in the world) because the bizarre combination of Scots and Salish is exactly the kind of melting-pot absurdity that I love. But then afterward, it occurred to me that if I had to pick just one sketch to sum up Victoria’s history, this might be it.
Croquet quarry
The Tailor and I just got back from a week on Vancouver Island. It was my second trip there, and I couldn’t wait to show him the Butchart Gardens on a sunny day.
Most stunning of all is the spectacular Sunken Garden, which feels like an English garden crossed with something out of Lewis Carroll’s imagination. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the Queen of Hearts might step out from behind a topiary, flamingo in hand.
The Sunken Garden is a landscaping masterpiece, a labor of love by Jennie Butchart, the wife of an early-20th-century industrial magnate. Jennie spent many years rehabilitating a spent limestone quarry, carting in topsoil and coaxing it into a living jewel. The garden is set up so that something is blooming in every season, but summer is really the time to see it in all its glory.
If you go, be ready for hordes of tourists—and despite that, for the overwhelming urge to move in and stay forever.
