Tea for Two…For Thirty-One Years!

Wow!  Thirty-one years!  Time sure gets away!  What an awesome blessing and a testimony of God’s goodness to be married to this man, my high school sweetheart and best friend for all these years.  We had an amazing day together.  When we travel, Jimmy does all the research concerning lodging and restaurants.  I plan the site-seeing, but he looks at all the options available for hotels and restaurants, then plans our day around our meals. Lol!  And he does an excellent job!  It’s always a surprise and a treat for me to see what he’s come up with.

We started the morning with breakfast at Willie’s Bakery and Cafe,  It was a nice walk from our hotel.  We had a good breakfast and then took a walk of the area.  We’d picked up some self guided walking tour brochures the night before at the visitor center, and we decided to get a couple of those walks out of the way before our guided tour of the Empress Hotel.

The walks took us to some very interesting places in the city.  We enjoyed Chinatown (the oldest one in Canada) and some of the other historic sites along the route.  We walked down some little alleys in Chinatown that were filled with interesting little shops.  It was a delight!

When we finished with the walking tour, we hurried back to the Empress Hotel where we had signed up for a guided tour of the hotel.  We really enjoyed learning more about the history of the hotel and seeing some of the places that are typically off limits.  Our guide was George, and he was very entertaining and knowledgeable.  The tour took about an hour and a half, and we learned a little about some of the famous people that had visited (Queen Elizabeth has visited 7 times) and some of the earlier royals as well.  It was a favorite place for Bob Hope (who always stayed in the same room)  and the Nixons spent their honeymoon here.

We also learned on our tour that the ivy that covers the hotel is not the original.  It was found that the original English Ivy did a number on the mortar, so it was all removed with the exception of a small area at the very center of the hotel.  All of the rest of the ivy was replaced with Boston ivy, which is much easier on the mortar.

We finished the tour and headed back to our hotel room to change clothes for our appointment for afternoon tea in the tea lobby.  We really should adopt this practice in the US!  It is such fun!  What an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.  We had a table for two with a beautiful view of the inner harbor.

It was a wonderful treat on our special day!  We changed back into our walking clothes after tea, and toured the Royal British Museum.  They had a very interesting special exhibit of photos from the Royal family.  We spent a good deal of time there, then decided to walk along a trail near the coast.  We took lots of pictures and saw some absolutely gorgeous scenery.  It is just beautiful here.  The weather is cool, but sunny.  It starts off in the mid to upper 50’s in the mornings, but reaches mid to upper 60’s in the afternoons.  What a refreshing switch from the heat and humidity we left at home (and will soon return to).

After our walk, we headed back to the hotel to get changed for dinner.  Jimmy had made reservations in the Empress room for our anniversary dinner.  It was so special!  The food and the service were outstanding, and when we finished our meal, they brought us out desserts with a special little sign that said happy anniversary and they each had a lighted candle.  What a great day we had!

Right after sunset, I headed back out to take some pictures at night.  Many of the buildings are lit at night, including the Parliament buildings.  The lighting was  installed  all along the outline of the building  to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.  They are still on today and this is the year of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee.  These photos were taken at about 9:45 pm, and you can see that it is not completely dark.  What a beautiful way to end this beautiful day.