fish & chips – Riveted

This Morning in Blakely Harbor

Laura Domela — Wed, 21 Jan 2015 20:45:10 +0000

This morning was soft and pink and quiet in Blakely Harbor, with a beautiful view of downtown Seattle:

We worked there until just after noon and then pulled up anchor and headed up to Winslow (Eagle Harbor, one harbor north of Blakely) for some fish & chips at the Harbor Public House, a stop at the market, and now, more work. The fish & chips were very good, but not as good as the Bandon Fish House's fish & chips. We had a pint of Sound Poundage Porter from the Sound Brewery in Poulsbo, which was fabulous!

It was only a half hour cruise up the east coast of Bainbridge Island. Here is our route, on a larger map, so you can see where we are in relation to Seattle:

Tomorrow: Seattle … Elliott Bay!

Boppin’ Around Victoria

Laura Domela — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 18:41:16 +0000

This morning we got up and worked, did some work, and then worked some more. For our lunch break, we headed down to the docks and caught an adorable little water taxi across the harbour. It was still pretty dark and windy, but the rain had stopped for a bit.

Our ride's here!

Leaving the West Bay Marine Village:

Dark sky with purple martin house silhouette:

We got off the harbour ferry at Miner's Landing and headed straight for Red Fish Blue Fish for some lunch (well, or breakfast…brunch? We have an early dinner reservation tonight so we just did a late breakfast/early lunch combo today and this place was it!) Their website said they opened at 11:30am. We arrived at 11:15am, and there was already a line of about a dozen people (we knew this would probably be the case). Red Fish Blue Fish is on the pier right by Miner's Landing, inside of an upcycled cargo container. It's cool, and has a great reputation for their food.

We had a 1-piece halibut fish & chips, a grilled, seared albacore tuna tacone (a cone-shaped taco), a half order of grilled Fanny Bay oysters, and a couple of Pellegrinos. Our halibut arrived first:

Everything was great! I'd say this is the second best fish & chips (next to Bandon Fish House in Bandon, Oregon). The other creative items on the menu help quite a bit, but the batter on the halibut was crunchy, the fish was great, and you gotta love their 100% sustainable policy.

After lunch we walked around Victoria a bit just sightseeing. Harbour, with BC Legislature Building:

Totem art:

Empress Hotel:

Cute little water taxi in the harbour:

There are flowers everywhere in Victoria!

Look at the line at Red Fish Blue Fish when we came back to our taxi stop:

We hopped on a boat and headed back to West Bay Marine Village. Looking back from the boat:

More purple martin houses:

Westbay Marine Village from the little ferry:

You can't beat the location of this marina and RV park. It's so close to town (would be an easy–and cheaper–bike ride into town, but we weren't sure what the weather was going to do and we kinda wanted to ride the boat) and the exterior spots all have marina or harbour views. Two of the shorter, marina view spots:

Remember when we were over in Pedder Bay and we had made reservations for the Sooke Harbour House for dinner (the whole reason we even went to Pedder Bay/Sooke in the first place)? And remember how we had the day wrong and we missed our reservation and had no chance to go again while we were nearby? Well, guess what? We figured out that the Sooke Harbour House is a 45 minute drive from where we're staying in Victoria, they are open tonight, and we got ourselves an early dinner reservation. Woohoo!

And now, a bit more work!

The Boathouse for fish & chips, then hiking Bodega Head

Laura Domela — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:31:10 +0000

Today we went out to grab some lunch and on Kyle's recommendation we stopped in at The Boathouse for some fish & chips. They were great…good crunchy batter, good fish…although I did hear the guy at the counter tell another customer that the cod they're using right now came from Oregon. What the heck? Those sneaky Californians using Oregonian cod!

Inside this place there's a wall of fish pictures and it's super faded and looks great so I shot a quick photo of a very small part of it (colors not adjusted):

Here's what the outside looks like:

We thought we'd do a little hike after lunch and so we headed out to the Bodega Head trailhead. I think there was one main, mellow path that was about a mile and a half, but we didn't take that. Or maybe we took part of it at some point, but mainly the paths we were on looked like this:

and this (yes, there's a trail through those flowers):

With views like this:

and this:

We hiked about 3 miles (and according to the FitBit, the equivalent of 45 flights of stairs). It was just gorgeous.

I took a few map screen grabs of where we were (see our campground loops on the other side of Campbell Cove?). The car was parked at the end of West Side Road at the trailhead.

And now, back to work.