Day 5

Today was really great! :D

Had a bit of a lazy start to the day. I didn't get out of bed until 10:30. But then I had the house to myself, so I made pancakes! Whole wheat flour, baking powder, an egg, milk, EVOO and almond oil, honey, raisins, hemp hearts, and banana. Grilled in oil, topped with banana and avocado. Pa-dahhh! :D

I caught up on 9gag on my computer while eating breakfast. I was going to go geocaching, but my weather app was telling me that it was cold out, so I stayed in for a bit.

Worship team practice was at High Point at 1pm, and since Ruth had invited me to join in for Sunday, I headed down. It was fun! :) On the way back, I spotted some blackberry bushes along the path. Good thing I hadn't spotted them on my way to the church, otherwise I may not have even made it lol! Seriously, these are the sweetest, juiciest berries ever, MMMM!!!

Worship team practice went a little longer than expected, so we didn't end up making it to that bike tour thing. Which was fine, we hung out at the house. I pulled out my colouring stuff and finished the picture I had started on the way here.

Then dinner was ready, Ruth made salmon, roasted veggies, and cauliflower stuff that was supposed to resemble rice. It was soooooo good!!! :D

After dinner, the kids and I coloured some more before heading out to Butchart Gardens.

To my Winnipeg friends: for those of you who have visited the English Garden at Assiniboine Park is beautiful, it is boring compared to Butchart Gardens. Oh my gosh, the flowers here are soooo gorgeous!!! :D

There's the Sunken Garden...

Fountains...

And of course, gorgeous flowers! :)

I even managed to find a virtual cache! :D

Then, of course, there were the fireworks! Apparently their fireworks are world renown. And I believe it! These were AMAZING!!! :D It was like a story going on, and they were set and timed to music. SUPER cool!!!

But alas, all great days must come to an end. I'm actually pretty glad, cuz I'm WIPED by the end of the day LOL! Tomorrow is Sunday, so church at High Point. Super excited to see my friend LA, and meet her fiance! Then if all works out, we are going for lunch. Perhaps I'll suggest Spiral Cafe so I can sample their carrot cake (Alison suggested it!) Until then, goodnight! :)

Day 4

Another long but great day today! :D

I slept in about half an hour later than what I have been getting up at, but I did stay up a little bit later last night.

I had breakfast at the house today - oatmeal with banana, raisins, and honey - delish! :) I wasn't able to get a hold of Alex right away - for some reason my phone wasn't receiving his reply texts... So I headed down to the Songhees Walkway to hunt for some geocaches on my own :) I'm pretty sure I had found one, and knew which tree it was by, unfortunately there were a whole lot of spiderwebs (complete with spiders) between me and it. So that didn't happen.

It was a great view from the walkway though! :)

I also made it right down to the water while I was on the walkway. That was cool! I was finally able to splash my feet into the ocean :D

Then Alex Facebook messaged me, so I headed up to his place, locked my bike up, and we started hunting for the cache at Government house. That one is a puzzle one, you need to be able to answer clue questions by finding plaques around the grounds. We found another giant tree...

The grounds are HUGE!!! With, of course, a spectacular view!

We maybe got through a quarter of the grounds and only found one needed bench plaque before Alex was getting pretty hungry. So we gave up on that one and headed to Bubby's (where he works) for lunch. This place reminds me a lot of Stella's. The atmosphere, the food, the many gluten-free and vegetarian options, the willingness to substitute stuff in meals... I had the blackened albacore tuna wrap with a side walnut and goat cheese salad. Aaaaamazing!!! :D

We also had dessert - I had carrot cake. It was good, but it didn't stand out for me. Then Alex had to get ready for his shift, so I headed back up to his place to grab my bike, then I did some more geocaching downtown :) I discovered a letterbox cache, which is where you find the coordinates listed, then follow directions to find the hidden cache. Really cool! I ended up down at Fisherman's Wharf again, so at least I knew where I was, and remembered a few of the landmarks listed in the directions. And I got it! :D

Before heading back to the house, I figured I might as well check for any more caches along the way, and ended up finding a virtual one (you have to email in answers to listed questions), and tried for another, but couldn't find anything. There were a few people around for this one trying to find it, with no luck. Dang you, Little Brown Post! :(

So back to the house I went. I was pretty drained, and needed to get dinner going. It was a long ride home, I had to get off the bike and walk a few times, the hills were just too much lol. But, made it back, and got dinner going. I made stir-fry with quinoa, sooo yummy! But alas, I had forgotten to take a picture, sorry :( But it was pretty tasty! :D

After dinner, I rested a bit, organised my pictures from the day, then after the kids went to bed, Ruth and I headed downtown to check out the International Buskers Festival. There wasn't too much going on yet when we got there, but we found an acrobatic duo on one of the stages, and we stayed and watched them. I was pretty impressed! Plus the guy is from Winnipeg, yay! I was most impressed with the big ring he rolled around in. I don't remember what it was called, but that was my favourite stunt.

When they were done, I was pretty tired, so we headed back to the house. It is currently 10:17pm, and tonight will probably be the earliest I've gone to bed while here lol. I'm pretty wiped though. So worth it! Tomorrow's plans include a restful morning (as restful as it can be with two young kids lol), worship team practice (Ruth invited me to sing and play guitar, cool!), a bike tour, then Butchart Gardens for the evening. Until then, adieu!

Day 3

Wow, today was full of many adventures! This morning I headed up the Galloping Goose Trail to meet up with Alex for breakfast. Oh my, was that ever a nice walk! I ended up being almost half an hour late for breakfast because I took so many pictures lol! The trail goes over the water too, it was really cool! This is halfway across:

We ate at Spoons Diner. There is an option there for the Prusa: "Whatever the kitchen feels like making for ya. Yes, you heard that right. Your only input is: Breakfast or Lunch, Sweet or Savory, Vegetarian or Not. Feelin' lucky? We'll flip you for it double or nothing. You win, it's on us. You lose, you pay double. If you have allergies or are one of those picky I-don't-like-anything-yellow-or-that's-touching-plants people you're not allowed to have this. There, I said it. No Prusa for you!"

Seriously awesome. Thought I was not feeling brave enough to try it today... But I had the huevos rancheros, it was super tasty! Similar to the Mexi breakfast at Stella's, but a bit different.

From Spoons, we walked down Government Street, passing through China town. I found a store (passed China town) that had a bunch of cowichan stuff, I bought a plaque thing of a Haida frog to hang on my wall :)

Continuing on our adventure down Government Street, we found Bastion Square. It was like a little pedestrian street that had little kiosks set up.

We also saw a 3D chalk artist! He had done a server, but because I had already seen the 2D view, it was hard for me to see the illusion. Maybe you, dear reader, can see it better than I can lol.

Down on Wharf Street, we saw a "coin operated" mime playing accordion, who would only play a song after money was put in the box in front. Very well done, it was really cool!

We were on our way down to Fisherman's Wharf. On the way, by Laurel Point Park, we found a tree in Charles Redfern Park that was MASSIVE!!!

We finally made it to Fisherman's Wharf today (yay!), and it was interesting! There were house boats there that were decorated really cool lol many of them had something funny about it. One had a little pot with grass, maybe 2"x3", with a little lawn chair, and a regular-sized sign saying, "Please stay off grass." Another had a little boat the house, with a cover on it that says, "In-laws suite." Another house had some driftwood art outside, my favourite one being this:

Along the dock, there was also a bucket of chalk, and a note that says, "Where are you from?" And many people have written where they're from, including myself :)

We had lunch at Barb's Fish & Chips. I wanted to eat there, because that's my mom's name, and I had already posted a picture on FB teasing her lol. But as it turns out, this place is fairly famous, having been on TV in Korea and China. It was also listed among The Top 10 Seafood Spots by the Sea in North America by Sunset Magazine. Cool! Alex and I shared a 2-piece Pacific halibut platter. We got the fish grilled in garlic butter, holy moly was it ever tasty!!! :D

After lunch, Alex had to start heading towards work, so we walked back to downtown and parted ways. On my way back to the house, I found some wild blackberries growing! They were soooo yummy! So I found some more and brought them back to share :)

I also had stopped along the way back to the house to take some pictures of some pretty purple flowers, and I ended up finding a butterfly that had stopped for a snack! It was pretty content with me taking pictures, and I got a couple good ones :)

So I made it back, without really using Google Maps, that was a feel-good moment lol! By the time I leave on Monday, I'm going to know this city like the back of my hand! Peter and big bro got back not too long after me, and so while dinner was cooking (Ruth made a rosemary fig roast chicken, sooooo good!!!), Ruth and I and the kids went down to Beacon Hill Park to see the animals there. We were only there for about half an hour before they closed, but we got to watch the goat stampede before heading back for dinner, that was fun lol :)

After dinner, and after the kids had gone to bed, Ruth and I went up to check out UVic. Peter is trying to convince me that I'll be back here taking classes in a few years lol! I would actually, but the idea is only just being planted in my head, so we'll see where this goes... ;)

After UVic, we went up to Mount Douglas. Wow. Seriously, I have never seen such a beautiful sight than from up there. From the very top, there is a 360-degree view. Absolutely breathtaking.

While we were there, Ruth was telling me about geocaching. I've heard about it, but didn't know how it worked. So she showed me the app that she uses - which is c:geo - and we set out to find one. The first one we went for, we must've ended up on the wrong path, cuz we just found a dead-end with 200ft left to go. So we tried another, and we found it! :D Ruth left a Salvation Army kleenex pack, so that I was able to take an item in exchange as a souvenir.

We did get a bit turned around after finding the cache, and we got lost trying to make it back up the trails to the parking lot. I must say, I was pretty glad for the cell tower that was up there, it was our beacon back lol! As we were nearing the top, Ruth had seen on her app that there was another cache just 90ft away, but it was getting dark, which makes it hard. Plus there's cougars around there. So we came back to the house. And had popcorn for a bedtime snack lol.

A very great ending to a very awesome day :) Tomorrow I'm hoping Alex will be interested in doing some geocaching with me, I am completely hooked on this! But whatever tomorrow brings, it's gonna be awesome!!! :D

Day 2

This morning started at about 7:45am. I heard the kids get up, but I also had my alarm set for 8am anyways. So I just got up right away, jumped in the shower, said good morning to the fam, then set off on Ruth's bike to meet up with Alex and Kala for breakfast at the Blue Fox Cafe.

Just wanna say, I walked over the blue bridge. It's a bridge that opens up to let boats through. It was really cool! I got off the bike and walked on the sidewalk so I could be a tourist and gawk at everything haha...

Blue Fox Cafe is amazing!!! The atmosphere, the staff, the food... So good! :D

Their special today was two blueberry pancakes topped with vanilla bean cream, sliced peaches, and maple syrup. Serious tastebud party!

After breakfast, the three of us headed back to Alex's. Kala had to get going (she lives in Nanaimo and had to head back for work), and I locked up my bike there. Alex gave me a tour of his new place - which is amazing! The front entrance (which isn't actually used) is spectacular! It actually reminds me a lot of Professor X's school in X-Men.

Then we went on an adventure! We walked around the east side of Craigdarroch, and I found lots of cool fauna! Holly, Monkey Puzzle, some other really interesting things that I have no idea what they are lol...

We made it to Craigdarroch Castle, which is really pretty! We didn't go in, but we walked around the outside, it's cool!

Then we headed downtown via Fort Street, stopping in a couple shops along the way. I got a book and a card! We also found St. Andrews Presbyterian Church, which had its bells ringing! So we went over and checked it out. The church was open for viewings, so we went in. Turns out that the eastern stained-glass windows were dedicated to Robert Dunsmuir (the dude had the castle built), but he died shortly before it actually opened in 1889. And those windows came from Germany, and were sailed around south of the Americas. Huh!

Then we headed down to the wharf. Or as Alex called it, Tourist Central. Which makes sense, there were a LOT of tourist things set up! Hippo bus anyone? :)

We were heading for Fisherman's Wharf, but we only made it as far as Laurel Point Park. Which was pretty :) Stopped and sat down for a few minutes (my feet were kinda sore by this point), then headed back up and around to Red Fish Blue Fish. Which had a decent line-up...

We only waited in line for about 40 minutes or so, which apparently isn't that bad! I'm not surprised, that fish was GOOD!!! I had the grilled salmon, Alex had the grilled albacore tuna. Oh man, as much as I loved my salmon, his tuna was sooooo much better!!! Grilled to medium rare, it was like melt-in-your-mouth splendour! I would definitely wait in line again just for that! :D

Point of interest: that wharf that Red Fish Blue Fish is on would be the equivalent to The Forks in Winnipeg. It is the founding spot of Victoria. Pretty cool!

Once we had our fish, we had to rush back up through downtown, cuz Alex had to be at work for 2, and it was already about 1:30. We ended up parting ways at Cook Street (the street his work is on), so I walked up to his place to get the bike, and head back to the Hickmans'.

All in all, I travelled 8.9km by bike, and walked 7.6km, for a total of 16.5km. Not too shabby for my first full day here! ;)

So I was back at the house long enough to have a quick rinse-off shower (I was stinky from biking those hills lol!) and a glass of water, then I was out the door with Ruth and little sis to pick up big bro from day camp, then we were off to the Victoria Bug Zoo! Oh man was that place ever cool! There's about 50 different kinds of bugs in there. And wow were the kids ever brave!!! They held as many bugs as they were allowed to through the tour! I, on the other hand, was not brave enough to hold any lol. I did, however, take pictures of all the bugs there! I will not post them all, lucky for you my dear readers lol, but here are a few of my faves :)

Frog beetle:

Black scorpion that glows green under a UV light:

Leaf-cutter ant colony (the largest ant farm in Canada):

Malaysian Orchid Mantis:

Once we were back at the house, we made sushi for dinner! :D My first time making sushi, and I think my rolls were pretty darn swell! :)

And they were delicious!!! Cream cheese, cucumber, carrots, mango, alfalfa sprouts, and scrambled egg. AAAAAAAMAZING!!!! :D

I figured it would be a good idea to stay in tonight. After two long (but super fun) days, I recognise that I need to give my body some down time. I was wanting to go out, for sure! But, probably for the best to stay in.

Tomorrow I'm meeting up with Alex again for breakfast at Spoons Diner, then the plan is to make it to Fisherman's Wharf and see the house boats. Gonna be another great day, I'm sure! ADVENTURE!!!!! :D

Day 1

A few months ago, I was thinking about how I'd like to travel this summer. I thought I'd like to head west and visit a few friends on the coast, and get the opportunity to see the Pacific ocean :)

So I put some ideas out there, contacted some friends on the coast, started looking at dates to travel...

Then I was chatting with Alex, and he was saying that he'd be in Winnipeg for Ai-kon in July, so I asked him if it'd be cool if I came back out with him (because by then he'd be living in Victoria). Which it was.

So, plans were put into place, dates were worked out and booked off, and transportation was booked!

July 15-21 Victoria visiting the Hickmans and Alex
July 21-24 Edmonton visiting Stewie (from camp) and Beth
July 24-27 Red Deer visiting Ian and Deanna

And so, here I am in Victoria! :D

While here, I'm staying with some friends of mine - Ruth and Peter Hickman. For the most part, I'm planning on hanging out with Alex during the day while the Hickmans are at work, and then hanging out with the Hickmans in the afternoon/evening while Alex is at work. Pretty sweet how it's all working out! :)

I am wanting to journal about my travels, and since I forgot my journal (whoops!), it's going into my blog here! So hooray, bloggety blog! :D

Yesterday, Alex and I set out to catch a 2:15pm flight to Victoria, with a layover in Vancouver. We stopped for lunch at the airport (Stella's, obvious choice lol), flew 2.5 hours to Vancouver, stopped to eat at Vera's Burgers (their meat can't be beat, apparently...), then flew 10 minutes to Victoria.

Oh. My. Word. The mountains were AMAZING!!!!!

And Victoria is really beautiful too! Honestly, I am falling in love with this city so fast. It's gonna break my heart when I leave....

So, first day in! Ruth picked us up at the airport (THANKS RUTH!!! :D), dropped Alex off at his place, then took me sight-seeing a bit.

I am so serious when I say this: Victoria has so many beautiful places!!! Dallas Road, the harbour, the Leg, the Empress, downtown! Not to mention MOUNTAINS!!! :D

In the evening, Ruth took me down to Gorge-ous Cafe to hang out with the knitting group from High Point. They meet every Tuesday evening there, and there's also a jam session happening there too, so that's pretty cool!

Then we went grocery shopping, and headed home for the night. It was a really long day, but it's soooo good to be here! :)