Port Townsend, W.A.

Last weekend Lorne and I made a little trip over the US border to the cute Victorian seaport town of Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula.

From Vancouver it was a short drive over the border and then we decided to take the small ferry that runs from Keystone (near Whidbey Island) - it takes only 30 mins and drops your right into Port Townsend's harbour, just a short walk/drive to the Highstreet (Water Street, as it's known).

We stayed at The Palace Hotel a very 'quaint' and beautifully restored victorian hotel, that dates back 120 years (which is old by N.American standards) and was actually a brothel in mid 1920's. The hotel features 15 charming guest rooms and suites, each still bearing the name of one of the "girls". The rooms are a nice size with fantastic 14-foot ceilings. (We even had a stained glass ceiling in our bathroom.) Each room and the lobby areas are decorated with antiques, collectibles and oldy-worldy fixtures that retain the true character of the Victorian era and literally make you feel like you've stepped back in time.

Not feeling the need to have one of the larger rooms, we stayed in 7B Miss Sara and at just $89/nt it was pretty inexpensive too (although some rooms are only $59/nt). In some ways you might think it's a fuddy-duddy sort of place but there was something novel about staying in a museum piece, especially since everything in Vancouver feels so tall, new and fashionably swanky these days while the best of the city's old buildings remain sadly neglected in the poorest, drug-infested part of downtown.

The atmosphere in PT is friendly, low-key and laid back - I really liked that about it. They also brew some excellent local beers :-) I especially liked that part too. In fact, shortly after arriving, we found ourselves sinking a couple of delightful IPA's (India Pale Ale) and baking in the glorious sunshine on the ocean-view patio at Sirens.

There's a definite middle-class hippy vibe to PT - and some of the local clothes stores seemed geared towards an older social worker versus cruise ship crowd - but there's also a younger, grungey/thrift-store chic element that's like a comfy old couch - in fact we felt like complete 'Townies' the first night when we dressed up a little and went to the Water Street Brew House (pictured below) for some rather tasty beer. (Beers at a brew house, I guess I'm stating the obvious.)

Thankfully nobody really seemed to care and graciously resisted the urge to point and laugh at us - but for what it's worth we just about froze (high ceilings and no heat), so a holey aaron sweater and requisite bushy beard would definitely have helped keep us a little warmer in there - but the extra hoppy beers helped.(Just as well really, since I doubt I'd suit a beard, not least because I suspect it'd be ginger!)

On Saturday we took a spin out to the shores of the Dungeness Spit, the longest natural sand spit in the United States at 5.5 miles long, although we didn't walk the whole trail.

Overall Port Townsend came across as just a very easy-going place with eclectic taste and some decent restaurants. I'd highly recommend the Thai restaurant,Khu Larb, for dinner - plentiful and very tasty.

Breakfast wasn't part of the deal at our hotel and, perhaps being slow season, it was difficult to find a cafe that was open on Saturday morning, so we ended up at the family-run Salal Cafe (not pictured here) as recommended by our super-friendly hotel guy, Robert. While service (even getting seated) was slooooow and the staff seemed somewhat vacant (Gordon Ramsay would have had a field day about the servers standing around doing nothing while food sat waiting and stomachs ran on empty), once the food arrived it was delicious and definitely worth the wait, so it redeemed itself pretty nicely. Next day (since we had a ferry to catch) we decided to avoid the wait at the Salal and ate at The Patio Cafe instead - great service & tasty food and, had the weather not turned somewhat cloudy and cooler, we would have eaten on their lovely flowered patio.

After getting off the ferry on our way back home, we decided to take a drive through the cute little town of La Conner, Washington - I was hoping the surprisingly lovely spring weather we've had might allow for some great photo opps of La Conner's famous tulip fields but as it turns out - even though it is going to start 6 weeks earlier this year because of the weather - we were nonetheless still just a couple of weeks early. That said, back on the road heading out of La Conner we did come across a few endless fields of daffodils; a sea of vivid yellow that you could from miles away. Only as you got up closer could you notice their gentle division of even rows amid bright, sun-shiney yellow - which made the darkening cloudy day somewhat brighter.

And before we headed back over the border, we stocked up on more cheap and fabulous vegetarian groceries at Trader Joes. It's an 'awesome' store that a friend told us about a couple of months ago and we were like voracious kids in a discount candy store. Highly recommend stocking up here, even to the meat-eaters.

All in all, Port Townsend is an easy and inexpensive weekend away, but remember to dress casually!

And there you have it, a rather long-winded review of our little trip that's taken me all week to get around to writing.