2 Year Anniversary - Seattle & Victoria

It seemed like it was just yesterday we were saying our I Do’s and partying the night away on one of the most incredible days of our lives. Instead, it was time to celebrate being married for 2 years and we had to do something exciting and possibly create a tradition where we go on a nice vacation each year…yeah, i’m game for that.

I had been collecting miles through Virgin America for quite some time and knew I wanted to use those miles to get us somewhere without forking over a credit card. Luckily for us, Seattle matched that requirement AND spanned over our anniversary so booked it was. However, having heard good things about Vancouver and knowing how close we were going to be to Canada we decided it was necessary to find a way to get up there for a couple days. One thought was to rent a car and just drive but with gas, car rental fees, paying to park our car at the hotel and the wait at the border sometimes reaching 5 hours, I decided to look at other options. It wasn’t long until I found some information from Clipper Vacations about a ferry boat that leaves Seattle and travels 2.5 hours to Victoria BC, which is on the southern edge of Vancouver Island. Ok, booked as well. Now all we had to do was figure out the hotel situation and we were set.

In Seattle, we decided to stay at the Mayflower Hotel which is in the heart of downtown Seattle and very close to the light rail, which was key since SeaTac (Seattle/Tacoma Airport) is 13 miles south of the city and the light rail is the easiest way to go. The Mayflower Hotel is an older hotel with a lot of history and since Cara is into history I figured it was a good fit for us. Plus like I said earlier, it was central to everything: The light rail station was about a block away, the monorail that goes to the Space Needle was less than a block away and Pikes Place was about 5 blocks away. This helped us get around the city to the places we wanted to go without worrying whether or not a car would have been better or not.

While we explored Seattle we got a chance to tour Safeco Field, home to the Seattle Mariners, then later watched them play the Detroit Tigers but they lost 3-6. Our tour guide Dexter, who was also the man behind the amazing wedding cake we had, showed us around to places like Kerry Park, the Fremont Troll, and Gasworks Park.

We then spent our Saturday enjoying different parts of the city with a stroll through Pikes Place and an underground tour of Seattle. For anyone interested in these tours, skip the tour by Bill Speidel and look into a company called Beneath The Streets Seattle. The key difference between the two, besides a cheaper admission, was the group size. Ours was about 10-12 people whereas the other had upwards of 40. 40 people cramped in the underground areas of Seattle? No thanks. Thanks to a family friend, we also had tickets to the SAM…Seattle Art Museum and spent about an hour strolling through it. We left and headed back to our hotel to get ready for dinner with the same family friend who resides in Seattle and they took us to a great restaurant just north of the city called Palisade. Great views, great service, great food.

Our next few days were spent enjoying the clean crisp air of Victoria BC as we strolled the city, took in the sights and toured an official castle: Craigdarroch Castle. We loved Victoria as it was extremely clean, easy going, breathtakingly beautiful and had a wonderful “feel” to it. It was relaxing but happening at the same time with everyone we encountered being extremely nice and helpful. While we may instead go to Vancouver next time just to add to our western Canadian experience, we would return to Victoria in a heartbeat.

Our trip ends with us returning back to Seattle to explore the south union lake area, visiting the Space Needle and Spy Museum before making our return back to SeaTac and flying home. We enjoyed every part of our trip and can’t wait to return. There was a slow paced feeling to a city that felt much bigger than it was. It was a good mix of feeling busy and active without feeling burnt out and run down. If anyone is interested in learning more about our adventure, we’d be happy to discuss it.

I also put together a quick timelapse of our plane trips from San Diego to San Francisco then to Seattle and thought it came out pretty good. This sequence is comprised of over 2000 photos taken with the GoPro with 1 photo taken every second.