Big Blue Watery Road

Vancouver Island is generally reserved for the old, decrepit people who want to retire in a Canadian paradise. It’s this very reputation (the paradise, not the geris) which attracts tourists in droves, without fail, every summer. While generally traveling there is too rich for my blood (thanks, BC Ferries), Marty’s parents wanted to make the trip and so we joined them for the long-weekend journey over land and sea. Do you remember last years’ island adventure? Prepare yourselves people – Darth Vader will play again.



Taking the car over was a much more pleasurable experience, with not having to trek a few miles to get to the terminal, lugging one measly bag which doubled as a purse. No siree – this time I packed a rollie-bag and lots of reading material, a computer, and anything else a reasonable person might need for a three-day getaway.







As you can see, the ride was very beautiful. Geris, here we come!

As we took an earlier ferry than anticipated and it was still hours before we could check in to the hotel, we decided to hit up Butchart Gardens to stop and smell the roses in the meanwhile.



I’d been to Butchart Gardens in, like, 2002 with my parents, so I was fully aware that I was about to be ambushed with an inordinate variety of flowers. What’s that? You don’t care to read a blog about flowers? Okay then. I’d suggest you shut your browser now then. Thanks for making it this far with us.









AW FLOWERS. CAN YOU BELIEVE HOW BEAUTIFUL THEY ARE.
ps. I love my Leica.



The sunken garden is a favourite of the geris. I can see why…it’s kind of nice!








A rare spot of solitude in this tourist-jammed mecca.







I’d like to introduce you to a variety of flower I dubbed the “gangster flower”. I mean, it has gold teeth – how much more pimp does it get:


Can you see it? It has a white goatee and gold teeth. It’s obvious.




These are totally like Lego flowers, aren’t they? WHO KNEW FLOWERS COULD BE SO COOL.




This is the newest addition to the gardens – an additional-cost carousel. You know, after paying $35 bucks to get in to view flowers, you might want to spend more money for a carousel ride. It could happen, but obviously hasn’t since it was nearly empty in there.









Ahh….and now, a photo break.

sigh

Okay, so one my favourite gardens is, of course, the Japanese garden. I like the sparse, spacious trees.













And finally, the star fountain and the French garden.









AND FINISHED! Yikes. That was almost too many flower pictures for me, and I took 3x this amount. Well, I’m all Butchart-ed enough for life now.

So we hopped back into the car for the backwoods way (thanks, GPS) into Victoria’s downtown. We arrived at our Priceline-booked hotel, the Coast Harbourside, and checked-in.





Oh yeah, ps, the room was massive. And we had a Juliet balcony! But the TV was a big clunkery one…TV’s are how I gauge hotel rooms. I’m snotty.

We all congregated and took the seaside walk into the hub-bub of excitement. Brace yourselves!




Seaplanes coming in for landing!









We strolled around for a bit and spotted Darth, mopping up his sweat. Mask off, he sure looked bad. Like, a greaser. My fantasy illusion is gone. And the violin was such a classy instrument.

For dinner, we headed down to the pier to feast on Djds’s recommendation, ‘Red Fish Blue Fish’.





UM……..I have no words that could give meaning to my feelings when eating this. It was that good. If I had to sum it up, I would use the words “perfect” and “blissful”. And it was fish. Which I hate. UGH! I want it in my belly now.


We ate on the ledge. You don’t get much closer to your food source than that.

We hiked the city a bit more before our legs began their revolt.






This is my twin! I love youuuu~

We grabbed the shuttle for the ride back and collapsed into our rooms. I did a bit of snacking and staring before the sleeping. Tomorrow we’ll do more stuff, but I’m going to break it up so you don’t feel like poking your eyes out. Enjoy the view!

Read more...

The True North

Canada is great. Perhaps we’ve even got a bit of that residual pride from the Olympics…not that we shouldn’t have it anyway. And while it never occurred to me to wear red on any other Canada Day, this year I just felt out of place in my black and grey ensemble. Somehow this Canada Day just felt more…Canadian than some from my youth, though that was tempered a bit with all the public displays of drunkenness. Thanks, losers at Steveston Village.

So, like I mentioned, we (the in-laws and Marty and I) headed to Steveston Village for the first of July.







First up, a sea-creature lunch. The line-ups to the restaurants along the boardwalk were filling up quick, so we headed upstairs to the ghetto-inspired interiors of the Charthouse.





The food was completely unremarkable, but the views were much more passable.





After lunch, we headed down to the wharf again, this time to examine the various forms of sealife on display. Ew. And we ran into Jen and Chris! A wah wahhhh?







Like I said, we ran into Yin and Schatz who we schpatzered (totally wrong spelling, I’m sure) with for a while, and then who directed us to the big salmon bake over yonder some blocks. Though we had already eaten, we were also interested in seeing some salmoncide (ha ha – my term for salmon suicide, remember?) Turns out there was a massive street party two blocks over so we joined the revelers.





Ha – we saw the cops busting the teenage set for underage drinking. The funniest was when some kid was so cut that he thought he’d try to take a sip from a beer while the cops stood there, waiting for him to pour it out. He got cuffed. It was sweet.


Burn salmons! Burn!

The fire was so hot, just standing 10 feet away nearly melted my face off. It didn’t help that suddenly the weather decided to be warm and roast me anyway. Blech. The salmon bake happened to be in front of a Japanese pavilion thing wherein there was – imagine my luck (jk) – a bonsai competition! It was fervent and heated and I frankly didn’t care much, but I took a picture because I like bonsai trees.


Kind of a crappy pictures, isn’t it? Yeah.

It got hotter and I got desperate-er, so I convinced the team to head to Garry Point Park to steal some breeze off the water.




Yayyyyyyy!



We sat here for only a short period before it was time to move on again – Marty and his Dad are not lingerers. That, or it could be that we were worried about the crying boy throwing dirt around yelling, “WHY AM I ALWAYS CRYING! I CRY EVERYDAY AND NO ONE ELSE DOES.” I’m not trying to sound insensitive as this child clearly had some issues, but I am kind of terrified of flying dirt. Did I mention that I’m OCD when it comes to keeping things pristine? I had my camera out and I’m not into dirt in the lens, thanks.

The point was full of all kinds of visitors, kites, and sights today.










hXc

On the way back, we saw that the Gulf of Georgia Cannery was free for Canada Day, so we took the opportunity to delve into the bowels of fishy history.






See? Expensive cameras take blurry pictures too.


Oh yum! Now where’s that can of tuna I was about eat. Lalalalalalala~


Fly fishies! FLYYYYYY


This is totally my favourite place to relax too…on a bed of fishes. Yessir.

After the 4,000 mile hike back to the parked car (okay, I’m exaggerating. Unbelievable, I know.), we headed up to Crescent Beach for a picnic. Isn’t this just the nicest Canada Day anyone ever had?









My shoes left hiragana in the sand. Oh, those Browns people make such hip shoes.




Yay Canada!

Any Canada Day would be incomplete without some sub-par fireworks. I still contend that if they really want to impress me, they should set them all off at once and make my life. We brought some lawn chairs this year to avoid being poked in the butt for 20 minutes by the sharpest grass in existence. Yikes!



And so my symphony of fire begins:


”BANG”

”POW”

”BOFF”

”BAP”

”KA-BLAM” (Okay, these are really the visual sound effects from the 1960’s Batman TV shows. I’ll stop now.)





HAPPY CANADA DAY CANADIANS!

Read more...