Vancouver Island

Day 213 – Road trip!

Aiming for the 9am ferry to Vancouver Island we picked up Marg and Jeff from their hotel at 8 and headed out of town.  Roadwork on the way to the ferry terminal at Tsawwassen thwarted our plan, but we made it onto the 10am ferry with no worries.

View from the ferry as it passed through the Gulf Islands.

Getting off the ferry at the other side I drove with extreme caution (I’d smashed our Honda Civic into the back of a five car pileup seven years ago in the same spo) and we headed for the Butchart Gardens, something Marg was most excited about.  These 55 acre gardens were created over 100 years ago by the wife of a cement manufacturer in the exhausted limestone quarry near their house.  They are now probably the most popular tourist attraction on Vancouver Island.

A very excited Marg!

 
The best looking quarry I’ve seen in a while!

 

 
Just like old times!

A window onto Tod Inlet.

Kat and Elliott in the Japanese Garden.

After lunch at the gardens we headed into downtown Victoria for a look around.  In part this involved the three men trying to keep the three women out of shops.  Eventually we lured them into a bar for a couple of beers / sangrias before having to repay the favour and wander around the waterfront market stalls.

The Empress Hotel on the Victoria Harbour.

Totem pole in front of the British Columbian Legislative Assembly Building (Victoria is the capitol of BC, not Vancouver).

I think Erin has a pretty similar photo from our first visit.

In the evening we met up with Karen and Randy for dinner.  Karen was a Rotary Exchange Student as a teenager and stayed with Pompa (Jeff’s Dad).  We met up with Karen and Randy when we were first visiting and they helped us out of a bind when we crashed the car.  Not only that but we realised that we are all quite like minded and got along famously, and so we were really looking forward to catching up with them.

First Karen and Randy took us all to dinner at a Greek restaurant in the suburbs of Victoria before we hopped in the Beast and followed their (relatively) tiny VW back up to their beautiful house in the hills.  Despite the fact that they were halfway through renovations they kindly put all six of us up for the night and like in previous times, Randy kept us entertained with his storytelling and banter for way too long (he had to be up before dawn to go to work)!  It was fantastic catching up and such a shame we only had one night to spare.

Casey at Erin’s foot was only a puppy when we visited last.