Castle > Mansion

>> Sunday, July 4, 2010

One of my favourite things to do on any given Sunday is to praas at a brunch buffet. I mean, it’s Sunday, we’re lazy, and tomorrow is work again – why not bury our problems in eggs benny? The question today was a matter of where – since we aren’t islanders by nature, we needed to find a reasonable price and convenient location. Turns out the Gatsby Mansion down the street fit the bill so we walked there and partook in a little bit of the early 1900’s.

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Note the classy “BUFFET BRUNCH” signage. Very representative of the period.

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Mmmm…lox. Any brunch that serves lox is aiiiiet in my books.

After stuffing our gullets, we headed out to the castle. Yes, the castle! Craigdarroch Castle, to be exact. Yessir, this tourist attraction is actually pretty neat indeed. This castle was built by some fancy businessman ages ago and was lived in by his family, mostly filled with reasonably unattractive children. What? I saw their pictures in the house. But that’s not important. The place was really cool.

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Do you see that? An apparition!!

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A headless maid

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More headless bodies

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Castle view…not too shabby.

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A smoking room! These are so retro-cool. Like, gross, but awesome, ya know?

Again, really cool place. I’d recommend it if you are ever in town, though I’m going to say castle is a bit of a stretch.

From here, we began our journey homeward, heading up to Nanaimo to grab the ferry from there. Ha haa….yeah. That plan was kind of disastrous. Marty figured (yes, I’m still blaming you, Marty) that we wouldn’t need a reservation for the ferry coming back, but he couldn’t have been more wrong. A four-hour, three-sailing-wait later, we finally boarded the ferry and I almost felt like kissing the dirty floor of the iron car hauler. Homeward bound!

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BEAUTEOUS! Until next time…xoxo, Gossip Erin

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Curiouser and Curiouser

>> Saturday, July 3, 2010

Ahh, summer on the island. You’d think the heat would bury us, but thanks to the temperate weather this year, I was toting long sleeves and am quite comfy indeed. Yay! July can stay at 15 degrees for all I care. I know, I’m in the minority.

So this morning we decided to take in the Royal British Columbia Museum and we were not disappointed. Though I didn’t grow up here, the history here is quite similar to that of the rest of Canada. Plus, I like cool dioramas and such. But on our way there, we wandered onto the land of the Parliament to take some pictures of Gordon Campbell’s much-hated domain. But I’m not trying to get all political here or anything.

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So if you watched the opening ceremonies to the Olympics, you probably saw that BC’ers are very…proud of their indigenous heritage, unlike the province where I’m from… But anyway, the indigenous peoples here in BC have these statues that they put up:

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I guess what I’m wondering about is why their boobs need to sag down so far? No disrespect intended, but I found it a bit baffling.

Marty hates birds. The closest he can get is face-to-face with a dead bird:

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Owls are so creepy.

So I’m not going to blab on and on about the museum (cuz let’s be honest, you won’t read it and it would probably be boring), so I’ll just share a select few (or many) photos from the excursion. There will be time for questions at the end.

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Animal poops! Haaaah – it was funny…I was taking this picture and some kid asks her mom “why is she taking a picture of poop?” and her mom was like, “I guess because she thinks its interesting…?” Yeah. Poop is interesting.

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Bear mask – aka creepy-ass face.

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Now this is a mask I could get behind (literally) – total rock and roll.

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Required reading

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This is a time-capsule from the ‘90s…and can I just say I totally had that ‘Skates’ hoodie in the background? Funny.

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Oh what fun! I like museums.
By now it was lunch so we wandered uptown for a food court lunch.

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Eh…it was alright. No ‘Red Fish Blue Fish’, that’s for sure. But I suppose Chinese food was fitting, seeing as how we headed on to Chinatown next. Of course, not before visiting the absolutely ridiculous Christmas store who sold the crappiest ornaments one had ever seen at the most outrageous prices ever. Uh huh. Oh yeah, and they kept posting these signs that if you weren’t a hardcore Christmas fan, you shouldn’t progress beyond this point and yadda yadda yadda. Absurd. Absurd because the signs weren’t even kidding. Anyway, on to Chinatown!

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Of course, Fan-Tan Alley is always a must-do…

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After some shopping for things, we headed into the Salvation Army store, which, in Victoria, is always filled with crazy people. I did some book diving and ended up with a book about narcissists – funnest!

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Book diving gone wild.

After some more sitting and staring and sunning, we decided to head out for dinner to…someplace whose name I forget. It was a steakhouse and I remember I had sushi, and it was delicious.

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That evening, Marty and his Dad decided to visit the wax museum and so his Mom and I made our way back to the hotel to sit in the pool.

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So we sat in the pool and it was here that we came into contact with perhaps the biggest douchebag I’ve ever met. This guy, American (it needs to be said, sorry), came in with his teenage-looking wife and their baby. He headed for the hot tub, and she headed into the pool with the baby. So me and Marty’s mom are sitting there, talking to each other and minding our own business when he turns to us and bellows, “My wife’s not very bright.” Uh-huh. “I mean, she’s not retarded or anything. She’s a good mom.” Riiiiight. He continues, “That’s one thing you can say about girls though – they’re loyal.” Wow, so awkward. We didn’t even know what to say. When she said something to him in her prepubescent shrill voice, he rolled his eyes at us and left with her. She wasn’t very bright though – she left through the men’s changeroom. Marty’s mom and I were like…what…?

The day ended much like last night – staring out the window at the cruise ships. Tomorrow we leave, so let’s try to have another island adventure before that happens…

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