On our first night in Nanaimo, Nancy had identified a possible venue for dinner. The Dinghy Dock Pub is on Protection Island or, to be more accurate, is on a floating jetty attached to Protection Island. There is a small boat that takes people to the island and a good chunk of those people were heading to the pub when we went.
You disembark and are basically at the entrance to the pub so no need to go on to the island at all if you don’t want to. If we had been there at a different time, it would have been nice to stroll around the island, but we only got there in time to eat and, after we had finished, time was moving on a touch. You can sit inside or outside and, since the weather was lovely, outside it was!
The food was nice (it’s a pub, not a gourmet restaurant) and sitting outside as the sun gradually went down was so relaxing. We did have to keep a thought about the return boat since it only goes hourly. If you miss it, you have a long wait. Of course, if you are in a pub, what could you possibly do to pass the time? We timed things quite well and the boat was not long after we had finished so we took the pleasant ride back across the harbor to Nanaimo.
I had to go to Cleveland for a conference recently. I have been to the Cleveland area in recent years, but it had been a long time since I was last downtown. The center of the city was not overly busy but there was enough going on to keep us occupied when we weren’t busy with the reason for being there. However, I was impressed by some of the architecture. If I had been able to spend more time, I would have wandered around and taken more photos, but I only had occasional opportunities and the phone was all I had with me.
