We didn’t pick the best weekend, weather-wise, to do our husband and wife disappearing trick, but Michelle and I nevertheless had a splendid time holed up in the new Sidney Pier Hotel & Spa. It’s a sweet spot, jutting out over the water like an ocean liner at port, and being just a quick ferry ride away across the Georgia Strait, it’s wholly accessible without feeling too close.

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As I posted “live” a few days ago, we missed the ferry by less than a minute, so after landing at Swartz Bay we had to drive into Victoria and drop the kids off at my mother’s and then turn around and race back up the Pat Bay Highway to check in and make our spa appointments on time.

After an hour long deep tissue massage with hot stones (which I’d never experienced before – awesome) and Michelle’s facial in the spa, followed by some chill out time in their “spa sanctuary”, we did a quick change and slipped into Haro’s, the hotel’s restaurant cheffed by Ray Elrick. It’s a very cleanly laid out space, with modern furnishings and floor to ceiling windows looking out onto the ocean. Elrick (ex-Oak Bay Marina, Abigail’s Hotel), who sources much of his ingredients close to home and is fully Oceanwise compliant, laid out a nice spread of butternut squash risotto, decal steak, scallops with salsa verde, and vegetable tempura, and we drank local Phillips beers and a bottle of 2004 Sandhill Petit Verdot from their Small Lots program. Great food and drink, and a happy development for Sidney, which has always been something of a culinary desert.

The next day the weather had taken a turn for the apocalyptic. After a DIY breakfast in our room (Umbria coffee, bacon, sausages, and pancakes) and a tour of the kitchen courtesy of Elrick (who seemed a very solid, locally-minded guy), we took to the road and traveled 15 minutes south to Sea Cider Farm & Ciderhouse (the winds were so strong that it felt as if our Westfalia – not a very aerodynamic vehicle – would tip over on the highway). The Ciderhouse was a very cool retreat. We sampled four different ciders, from the clean, crisp, and dry to the hot and buttered, together with a plate of cheeses, breads, charcuterie, and smoked salmon. It was a wonderful little getaway, and we had it all to ourselves.

Back in Sidney we stayed close to home, touring several bookstores (the best place to shop for books in BC) and shopping in the hotel’s eclectic gallery featuring the work of what seemed like dozens of local artists (I bought Michelle a silver salmon ring by Chris Paul). Mineral world is right next door to the hotel, so I got my paleo-wonk on and had a jolly time with Cambrian crinoids, ammonites, and various bits of dinosaur coprolite (fossilised poop). We stayed in that night as the weather had become particularly forbidding. The hotel has a pretty extensive DVD collection and big flat-screen TVs in the rooms (side-loading), so we curled up and watched Sideways, Gosford Park, the waves wind-whipped over the pier, and the first flakes of snow fall.

The next morning saw us not a little concerned about the roads. Westy just got new tires, but she’s still a bit of a disaster in snowy and icy conditions. Still, the heater works (thank God), and we had to pick up our kids from grandma’s and then catch the ferry home. So, after a breakfast with a brace of locals in the hotel’s Georgia Café & Deli (first pain au chocolat in years), we started slowly down the highway. There were plenty of cars skidding all over the place, and we saw many that had spun off into ditches. Thankfully, we arrived in my old James Bay neighbourhood and my mother’s house without incident, and were glad to be reunited with our kids.

It was a very relaxing weekend with plenty of sleeping in and lounging. I like the idea of being able to escape the city for a weekend away without having to drive too much or fly. The ferry, in this sense, becomes more like a cheap cruise, and because the Sidney Pier Hotel & Spa is just a few minutes from the dock, it shaves the tedium of the full trip into Victoria. And you know what else? Sidney is a cool little town. When I was growing up in Victoria we used to make fun of it as the Land of the Newly Dead and the Nearly Dead (no Newly Weds), but it appears to have evolved into quite a little cultural zone with a pedestrian friendly drag playing host to lots of interesting shops and, as is well known, plenty of well-stocked bookstores.

We’ll be back for sure.