We stayed at The James Bay Inn in Victoria in Fall 03. It was pretty old fashioned and plain, although spotlessly clean. We ate a nice breakfast in their restaurant each morning, although we didn't have dinner there. The location is easy walking to Victoria's excellent Royal British Columbia museum, downtown, the Legislature Building, and the Emily Carr House. It's nice to walk along the harbour as well as the waterfront near the inn.

We had excellent English style fish and chips at The Haultain, which is a Victoria institution. We'd had our heart set on "tea at The Empress", but in the end, balked not only at the $50 CAD price for the tea, but the directive that the tea was to take no more than an hour!! Instead, we opted for our Victoria tea at Butchart Gardens, a huge estate just outside of Victoria, where you can spend the better part of a day. We had the tea late, about 4:00 and it was so lavish, that we didn't need any dinner. Can't remember the price, but definitely a lot less than the Empress. You can just walk though the lobby of The Empress to see it. For a really budget priced tea, we noticed a cute little tearoom near The James Bay Inn, called The James Bay Tearoom.

In Vancouver, on the same trip, we stayed at The Barclay House in the West End, which had about five rooms. Can't remember the number of the room, but it was their least expensive, and the large bed occupied most of the room! The private bathroom was down the hall, the W.C. being in a separate room from the shower. Vancouver has very expensive accomodation, and this suited us fine. We could walk to Stanley Park, or right downtown. Be sure to visit Granville Island Market, the wonderful Museum of Anthropology which is on the University of British Columbia campus - you can take a bus there if you have no car. After a Chinese dinner, we had ice cream at The Casa Gelato on Venable Street http://www.lacasagelato.com where we chose two of 198 flavours.

You're sure to love the Canadian West. Have a great trip, eh?

Margaret and Les in Toronto