victoria Archives - Curiously Carmen

The Pink Bicycle

January 19, 2017

While in Victoria, the boyfriend and I tried a few locally loved restaurants. I mean, you’re not truly visiting a place if you don’t try their food, right? When we were looking up restaurants to eat, The Pink Bicycle rose to the top of both of our lists.

We made the decision to walk from our hotel to The Pink Bicycle to save on parking and see more of the city, but the walk was longer and more difficult than we expected. We got a bit lost, it was still really cold from the snow storm warning, and I was getting blisters from the new winter boots I had just bought in preparation.

The restaurant is dark and doesn’t really have much signage, except for a pink bicycle on the window.
As expected on a Friday night, there was a bit of a wait. The restaurant is pretty small, and the kitchen is on the top floor. I always feel a bit bad for restaurants where the kitchen is on another level, because of the servers who have to walk up and down.

If that was me, I probably would slip a few times.
Pink Bike Cheeseburger, $12.50: I ordered their standard cheeseburger, but without the cheese due to my dairy restriction =(. It came on a toasted sesame bun, naturally raised local beef, veggies, and the pink bike sauce (a combination of mustard, ketchup, and relish).

This burger was such a delight! You could really taste the quality in it. The patty was thick and juicy, and full of flavour. You know it’s a good burger when the juices are oozing out onto your plate and getting all over your fingers.

I also really enjoyed the sesame bun. It was nice and thick, and reminded me of a classic burger. Although the pink bike sauce is just a combination of mustard, ketchup, and relish, they really nailed down the ratio because it tasted really good.

For my side, I stuck with the regular fries. They were nice and crispy.
BBQ Island Bison Burger, $15.50: The boyfriend also really enjoyed the bison burger. As with my beef burger, his bison burger was thick and juicy as well. It was topped with smoky cheddar and BBQ sauce.

Since we were on vacation, he went all out and upgraded to the mac and cheese sticks. I really wish I could have tried them because he kept raving about how delicious and cheesy they are.

He also added a zesty lime mayo dip, which he said was alright. The star of the dinner was definitely the mac & cheese sticks for him!

Overall, we really enjoyed our food at The Pink Bicycle and I would highly recommend giving it a try if you’re a burger lover! Service was a bit slow since they were busy, but they were all very friendly and catered to my food restrictions nicely!

Yay!

Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe Resort Review

December 14, 2016

To celebrate the end of my university career, and to just have a quick vacation since we haven’t travelled together since our Mexico trip we took over 1.5 years ago, the boyfriend and I decided to head over to Victoria, BC this past weekend!

We have both been to Victoria before, I went with my high school years ago and him with his family. Victoria is the capital city of our province, and located on Vancouver Island, which is about a 2 hours ferry ride from the Vancouver.

I will be writing a few posts about our weekend to Victoria. Today, I am starting off with a review on the hotel we stayed at, the Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe Resort!

When looking for a place to stay, we both wanted something centrally located in downtown or within walking distance. The Delta Victoria is located across the small bridge, less than a 5 minute walk to downtown and Chinatown. It has also just been recently renovated!

One of my favourite parts about the trip was the hotel room.The room we stayed at was the Deluxe Water View Guest Room w/ King Bed. It is not everyday that I am treated to such a beautiful view whenever I look out the window.
At night, it was such a breathtaking sight seeing the parliament building and Empress Hotel lit up.
I also caught this sunrise by accident. The boyfriend had wanted to wake up early to avoid the lineup at Blue Fox Cafe, and I reluctantly agreed. Funnily enough, I ended up waking up earlier than him. When I opened the blinds, I was completely caught off guard to the beautiful sunset.

I sat at the chair for a good 15 minutes watching the sunrise, appreciating the beauty of it and reflecting on how lucky I was to have caught it.

Here are pictures of the hotel room that I took:
Once you walk in, the washroom is located on the side. As mentioned earlier, everything had been recently renovated so it was quite nice. The washroom does not have a bath tub, but a large glass door shower which felt very modern. Half of the rooms are equipped with a tub, so if this is something you would like, make a note on it with the staff!
The bed was insanely comfortable, making it hard for me to get up each day! The pillows were also very soft and deep, and I found myself getting lost in them.

There is also a sitting area for guests to enjoy the view, should they choose the Water View suites. We found ourselves sitting here quite often, just watching the city.

We also took advantage of the cable and TV, and enjoyed many Christmas movies! There are also adapter plugs that you can use to plug in your laptop. Speaking of technology, each room comes with free wifi. It was very reliable and fast, with no connectivity issues at all so yay!

The Delta also has an indoor swimming pool with floor to ceiling windows that face the inner harbour. We didn’t bring our swim gear, but it looked like a great place to have fun and soak!

There is also a restaurant on the main floor! We didn’t get a chance to try it, but the restaurant was buzzing with activity on both the Friday and Saturday nights we stayed. It definitely looked like the place to be. Plus, there is a beautiful view of the water in the restaurant as well.
Want to relax and pamper yourself? The Delta Victoria also has a spa!

We really enjoyed our stay at the Delta Victoria. All the staff were really accommodating and nice, from the doorman, to front desk, to the cleaners. With the snowstorm, I had just purchased some new winter boots and was getting blisters while breaking into them (ouch). They gave me a bunch of bandaids to prevent them from getting worse and even a mini sewing kit to pop the blisters (I was too afraid to do that hahaha).

If you are planning on heading to Victoria, I highly recommend staying at the Delta Victoria. Rates begin around $160~ a night, depending on the type of room. For more information, visit the Delta Victoria Ocean Pointe website!

Keep an eye out for a couple more posts on Victoria!

Yay!

Disclaimer: This suite was offered to me at a discounted media rate. Opinions are my own.

Bon Macaron Patisserie

February 11, 2015

Hi everyone!

Maki hopped on a ferry to Victoria over the long weekend, and surprised me with a box of macarons from Bon Macaron Patisserie! I’ve never heard of them as I’ve only been to Victoria once for a high school field trip, and also because I don’t have much of a sweet tooth. I also don’t understand the crazy macaron phase that everyone obsesses about but to each their own =)

But enough of me rambling on, I’ll get to what you are all here for =)

First off, can we talk about how cute their mascot is?! It’s a French sir macaron hehehe! After browsing through their site, I learned that Bon Macaron is owned by two good pals who were born, raised, and educated in France, before settling down and opening their store in downtown Victoria.
Inside the mini box were six assorted flavours! They looked so cute and dainty. Maki picked out random flavours for me, but avoided their savoury macaron section. At first, I was a bit disappointed hearing that because I’m sure you all know how much I love my savoury foods over sweets! But she told me they were pretty disappointing and some were really gross, so I guess savoury macaron flavours don’t go well together.
They were all so cute that I couldn’t help putting them all on a plate and making it look nice. Macarons unite! Since we both didn’t know what all the flavours were in the box, I was left to taste test each one and figuring out which flavour it was based on their website. I think I did pretty well, there were only two that I couldn’t figure out exactly but good thing my friend remembered.
The first one I tried was the tangerine chili, it even had sparkles on it if you look closely or open the image in a separate window! I hope that the sparkles are safe for consumption LOL! I loved how this wasn’t too sweet and had a custard filling inside, there also wasn’t much of a chili taste which I preferred. Yum!

When I first bit into the second macaron, my thoughts and taste buds went from weird -> yummy -> weird -> yummy -> I’m not sure how I feel about this anymore. Originally, there was a strong spicy cinnamon and chai taste to it. Then, it started to taste like bananas. I really enjoyed the banana part, but I wasn’t a fan of the strong cinnamon taste. This was either the chai or banana flambe macaron, it seemed like it was a mix of both flavours.
Up next was the chocolate pear, I didn’t see this on the menu but my friend remembered the flavour. I didn’t taste the pear, only the chocolate. They use a dark chocolate filling, so it wasn’t super sweet. I enjoyed this one as well =)

The light pink one was the raspberry. Compared to all the other fillings I had tried so far, this one was a lot sweeter. The raspberry tasted like the candy flavour, instead of the raspberry fruit. I also noticed that the amount of filling that they give here is a lot less than at Theirry’s or Soirette, but that doesn’t bother me!

One of the classic flavours, good ol’ chocolate. If you’re looking for something original and want to keep it safe, this one is the way to go. Just like the pear chocolate above, this chocolate macaron wasn’t too sweet and tasted like it was made with dark chocolate. I liked the lightly dusted cocoa powder on top as well!

Last but not least! I had no idea what flavour this was. I wrote down mini notes on each of these because I figured I’d probably forget and all I wrote for this one was ??? LOL! However, I asked my friend and she said it was the bubble gum flavour. Now that I think of it, there was a slight hint of bubble gum, but it tasted more like a plain macaron except hot pink.

4665958_orig — Picture from EatDrinkVictoria.com

Overall, I really enjoyed the macarons and was left with a happy tummy. Each of the macarons were made with great quality and tasted great even though it had been a couple of days since my friend bought them. The outside shell was slightly hard but when you bite into them, they are soft and a bit moist and chewy. A bad macaron would be super hard, crumble, and crack, leaving you with nothing but a mess and a macaron corpse.

I only had a few small bites of each since I was planning on going to bed soon, but wanted to try them since they were still relatively fresh! I’ll finish the rest of it off today >=). It is recommended that the sweet macarons (ones that I received) should be consumed within three days, and the savoury ones to be consumed within one day.

Special thanks to my wonderful friend Pauline for being thoughtful and surprising me with these treats! =)

What are your favourite macaron places?

-Carmen