Victoria
Well it is certainly a good thing that God looks out for fools. I misunderstood David to say “wait at least 15 minutes before buying bus tickets while on the ferry” He actually was warning me that they only sell the tickets at the beginning of the 1 1/2 hour ride. So when we went to the bus ticket counter there was nobody there! A little searching and asking around found the drivers eating lunch and by pleading stupid they sold us tickets and did have our luggage on the bus. At least I got that part right. The Coast Harborside Hotel is very nice, good location, and even has a shuttle bus for local drop off and pick up from downtown. Poe may have picked up a little bug, and was not feeling too well, so we rested and the next day was drizzly, so we went to the B.C. Museum and saw an IMAX of Caves and then toured the museum. John Lennon’s Rolls Royce? I guess why not?
yellow submarine
The natural history and First Nations part of the exhibits were great, then we had a quiet evening.
Monday we went to Butchart Gardens and were blown away. Even though it is a little early in the season here, and the roses were not blooming yet, the place is incredible. Clearly a must see in Victoria.
As soon as we got back to Downtown, we walked into the Fairmont Empress for High Tea, another quintessential experience in Victoria. It is overpriced of course, but none the less an experience.
This morning we got up at O-dark-thirty to get Poe to the flight home. The airport is 15 miles north and the airport shuttle was here at 4 AM. Now I am getting ready to catch the Victoria Clipper Ferry to Seattle where I will meet brother John.
Tags: Travel
James
May 17th, 2011 at 3:47 pm
I hope you enjoyed the visit to Canada, Poe, so that you feel like coming again. It actually hasn’t been Canada for very long. Alberta and Saskatchewan were formed in 1905, the same year that Norway was formed. Before that it was the District of the Assiniboine. So if our grandparents had come here 10 years earlier, they would have come to indian country, and we would be half Swedish. To get from here to Canada, the Canada which burned Washington DC in 1812-14, one had to travel 2,000 miles southeast. That is like going from the 4 corners Navaho country to Orlando, or from Orlando to Trinidad. From Toronto’s perspective, we only ceased being a colony and became an actual part of Canada more recently. That would be when Calgary staged the Winter Olympics and had accumulated enough oil money to threaten to “let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark”. And there still are only three places in western Canada, namely Calgary, Vancouver, and the Athabaska Tar Sands. Edmonton, for example, with 1,000,000 people is completely beneath the radar. So there is your unofficial history of Canada for today.
May 18th, 2011 at 10:27 am
Well thank God I have seen two-thirds of Western Canada. I do believe Poe enjoyed it as well. Keep educating me, I need it.