Tofino Bound

I have never been to Tofino before and I have always wanted to go because so many people tell me how beautiful it is. This year I decided it was time to check it out. I looked up Tofino on the web, and searched for any events. The Food & Wine Festival goes from June 3 to 5 so I bought tickets and booked a suite at the Beach Break Lodge - which was actually the first place I found.

We took the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo - this was Deena's first crossing by this route. We caught up with Robert Hooper and David for lunch. Deena got a couple of great big hugs from Robert - you would think they like each other or something.

Traveling across the island was interesting as I have never been this route before. Much of the route was white-knuckle driving because of the twisting road so Deena was pretty sore from trying to keep her balance. Maybe I will let her drive back so she can at least hold on to the steering wheel.

It was about 3 hours from Nanaimo to Tofino. It was easy to find the .Beach Break Lodge because I have my navigator going in my phone. The place really is gorgeous - inside and out.



Seriously, this is the view from our back porch. Yes, that is our hot-tub/spa in the lower right corner of the photo. While the spa holds two easily, you would have to have close friends to fit four people. Indoors there is also a huge bath tub for two people and a large shower (also fits two).

We went into town to look around. There is an awesome grocery market there that has a lot great food. While our suite has a kitchen, it is small and does not have a lot of appliances.

We ended up at The Shelter for dinner. The first Vancouver/Boston game was on, but we were seated upstairs so could not watch. They had a feature fixed menu for the festival, including wine pairings with the different courses.

We started with fresh clams in a tomato ragout paired with a rose wine. It was great using pieces of fennel seed bread to soak up the extra ragout.

Then we had breaded oysters on fennel slaw with a mayonnaise dressing paired with sauvignon blanc,

Finally we finished with baked sockeye salmon on potato salad and kale, with gherkins and capers, pared with a pinot noir.

Desert was dark chocolate mousse with raspberry compote. Deena had port and I had a Joshua Tree - navan, grand marnier, and roiboss tea with a slice of real vanilla bean.

At the end of the meal we heard the crowd scream and as we were walking downstairs we could see on the big screen that the Canucks won - scoring the on goal with 17 seconds left in the game. Those Canucks should like to cause the fans a lot of stress...

Later that evening we just chilled out, and then warmed up in the hot tub before packing it in for the night. There is nothing like sitting in a hot tub looking out at a beautiful beach while it is growing darker.