We took a short vacation to Victoria, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. I must say that is one of the most beautiful harbor cities I've ever seen. It looks so pretty ... it's like one of those jigsaw puzzles you see in the stores. It happened to be Canada Day on the day we visited and it was packed around the harbor area with people celebrating. At the harbor you will see the Parliment building, a museum and a beautiful old hotel named, "The Empress." Along the street you will see people offering horse and buggy rides and also rickshaw rides. The downtown area surrounding the harbor caters to tourists and is very clean and fun to walk around. I strongly recommend visiting Victoria. Plus, if you go there, you will most likely take the ferry over from Port Angeles and THAT is a fun experience in itself! You can take your car over on the ferry with you. The ride takes about an hour and a half. Keep in mind that you should get to the ferry to go home at least an hour ahead of the time it leaves. We arrived a half hour early at the dock to go home and almost didn't make it on the boat! The loading zone was full of cars and we had to wait on stand by. We were number 10 on stand by and I really didn't think we'd make it. To our surprise, they were able to fit all of us on board up to and including two more cars waiting behind us.
There are three towns that top my list of favorite places to live. Although, of the three, I've only lived in one of them. They are:
San Luis Obispo tops my list. It's probably because I have relatives who live there and it was fun living there in the same town. I miss that a lot although they probably didn't realize how much I liked living near them by the few times I visited them. Anyway, San Luis Obispo (Pronounced San Lewis Obispo NOT San Louie Obispo) is a wonderful place. The town is not too big and not too small. The downtown is clean and there aren't a lot of bums there. It's basically a college and retired person's town. The weather is just wonderful all year around. Locals call it SLO Town or San Luis. Every Thursday night one of the downtown streets is blocked off for Thursday Night Activities (Farmer's Market). Everyone in town gathers there to eat fantastic Santa Maria style barbecued tri-tip sandwiches, see clown acts, buy craft items and just hang out with friends. And I do mean EVERYONE goes there. It is truely a community affair.
Some of the many things in SLO to see are Cal Poly, Mission San Luis Obispo, the beautiful creek running next to the mission in the heart of downtown and the Madonna Inn. One interesting place is Bubble Gum Alley. This alley is downtown next to a lingerie shop (I forget what it's called). It's near the mission. The alley is in the Guiness Book of World Records. Everyone who goes down the alley puts their bubble gum on the wall. Some of it is artistically placed. The creek running through downtown has beautiful flowers on one of the embankments. A path runs pretty much the whole length of the downtown portion of the creek and there are a few shops hanging out overlooking the creek, too. The Fremont Theatre is an old style theatre downtown. It is a beautiful building on the inside and the outside has an old style marque.
Wallace, ID, is another nice town. It has a population of only 1,010. The whole town is listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. The character of the town is pioneer/mining influenced. It is very clean and has a nice close community feeling. The town is surrounded by tree covered hills. This town was featured as the town in the movie Dante's Peak.
Astoria is nice because it reminds me of one of those puzzles of fishing towns. It also reminds me of Eureka, but without the bums. It is usually overcast there, or raining. Pretty much the houses are all very old. There is a lot of history to be found in that town. The Astoria bridge is pretty neat, too. It is very long. You can view some pictures of Astoria on Brian's photography page. Seagulls like to catch air along the sides of the bridge and glide right at you as you drive by. From a distance, on a good day, you can see just a line of seagulls hovering along the right and lift sides of the bridge right above the railings. You can tell they are just having fun.
If you go to Astoria, be sure to visit the Astoria Column. It's on a hill above town. You can see quite a distance in all directions from the column. Be forwarned: The column contains a heck of a lot of stairs! However, it's well worth the climb.
There are a few other places I like, also. Out of this list, I have lived in three out of the five towns. These are:
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