A Visit to Victoria

You can get addicted to visiting other countries. After living abroad and traveling, when I have a chance to visit another country, I take it! I’ve missed the ability to just travel and our or two to visit another culture than mine. Since we were a 90 minute ferry ride from Victoria, BC on our trip to Port Angeles last week, we decided we’d pop on over and explore!

The day we chose was a chilly, grey, blustery day, but it was fun to walk around and get a feel for this city. It feels very European, both in the architecture and the mix of cultures and languages heard. One day was barely enough to scratch the surface. We definitely need to go back!

It was a good chance to practice my urban travel photography, which is a bit rusty since I’ve been photographing so much in nature. I’ve still got it in me, though! There’s nothing like an interesting bicycle scene to spark the creative juices.

I think the bill postings you find always say a lot about a city, don’t you?

I love Chinatown, in any city. There is something so interesting about the shops crammed with merchandise…

Of course, there is a requisite stop at the Parliament building…

And the silly family selfie! We call this the “Patrick face.” In a family selfie a while ago, my husband was making this weird face that made Brandon and I giggle, so it’s become a family joke.

I stopped in to see some art at the Robert Bateman gallery. He is a very talented painter who does realistic wildlife scenes, although I preferred some of his early abstract work on display. Next time, I want to get to the art museum to see the work of Emily Carr.

Chilled and tired of walking, we stopped into a coffee shop for a warm chai and some free WiFi. My son was going into smartphone withdrawal without connectivity all day!

Unfortunately, we didn’t make plans early enough to include a tea at the Empress Hotel. Maybe next time!

The images were all captured using ProCamera, had basic adjustments in Snapseed, and then edited with my new Klahhane Ridge formula in the Stackables App. You can download the Klahhane Ridge formula from my last blog post here.

That last image of the Empress Hotel, with the interesting angle and grey skies made me think “film noir.” Experimenting with it, the Tintype formula in the Stackables App gave the feel I was looking for. Not the usual view of the Empress, but I think it works well for the architecture and the dreary sky.

It was a fun day of wandering a beautiful city. I can’t believe we had never gotten up there for a visit in our all of our years of living so close. Now we need to plan a trip specifically to Victoria, so we can see everything we missed!