Cruisin’ Canada: Victoria

Romney’s big joke is to call Canadians “Canadans” and call Canada “Canadia”. This has cracked him up all day and has become contagious to the rest of us. I am sure we sound completely intelligent and educated walking around the city talking about what we enjoy about “Canadia”.
Up and at ‘em the usual way again this morning. We picked up a city map on our way into town (in order to find our accommodations for the next couple of days.) The handy-dandy laminated fold-up map included the recreation paths around the city, so we thought we would try them out with our bikes (otherwise, it would be a total waste to have drug them across the border with us, extending the length of our already long, and difficult to maneuver vehicle.) We are pretty sure (only pretty sure because Bill didn’t have his odometer on his bike for this trail.) we did around 10 miles. We thought we would end up at what we thought would be a beautiful and large city park (according to the handy dandy laminated fold up map). However, we missed the “park” because it was not a park at all, merely a small gravel path around a lake. We did however make it to a grocery store for water and granola bars, which made our tired boys very happy.

After recharging the kids’ batteries with food and water (We are great parents to give them that stuff, no?) we dropped off the bikes at the RV, took the water ferry to Fisherman’s Wharf and got them some real food (ice cream and fish and chips, ya’ know real bad for you food.) We hunted down the double decker bus service that provides tours of the city, and hopped on. The boys thought it was super cool to be riding that high above the street and without a roof over them as well.



We all spotted souvenir shops from the bus, and the kids had been begging us to take them to some more, so we hopped off in Chinatown and let them spend their money Romney picked a stuffed moose, William picked a t-shirt, a stuffed moose, a keychain and a double decker bus toy.




I picked a fleece jacket to keep me warm in the cold of the evening, and Bill still didn’t find any “junk” he wanted to take home with him. Romney treats his stuffed animals as if they are alive still. I find it very charming and innocent (I hope he stops by the time he is an adult, that is no longer charming, that is mildly insane). He lets his moose shake hands with the giant statues we see around town. “Moosie” gets a front row seat at lunch, on the bus, and shopping around town. He talks to Romney and Romney talks to him. It is very endearing. William picked a stuffed moose to play with Romney’s “moosie” as one of his souvenirs.

We knew we would try and find our lunch in Chinatown, since that is where we were at the time hunger hit. What we didn’t know was that I would score and find a hidden little raw food cafe just as we were deciding where to go. Horray for me. I had a delicious raw pizza, half a slice of raw blackberry cheesecake and a superfood ball. Bill had the same, but instead of the superfood ball, he had a cherry truffle. The boys had a plate of apples, berries, carrots and raw crackers (and Romney had as much of the raspberry cheesecake as we would let him steal from us).

It felt good to have had such a great lunch, and we were all recharged and ready to see more. We strolled along the streets taking in the sights and then jumped back on the sightseeing bus for the entire tour.




The tour was an hour and half drive through Victoria. We saw both sides of the island (and a gray whale along the way, that was a highlight.), took in all of the downtown area, and then the parts of town our feet were too tired to take us to themselves. We drove past the “castle”, which was really just a mansion a very horrible person had built, and learned a lot of folk lore and history about the area. It was really a high point of our Victoria trip. The boys were a big fan of not having to walk to all of those places on their own two feet.

Dinner was chosen as a thank you to the boys for being such great sports about our raw food lunch. (Old Spaghetti Factory, if you are curious. Yeah, they don’t exactly live on the edge when it comes to their palates.) We knew the boys (especially our youngest) wouldn’t make walk home from dinner, so we had an adventure and got our selves back to the marina we are staying at via the city bus system.

Laundry and a Pokemon movie are on tap for tonight. It is our last night in beautiful Victoria. A lovely island, full of beauty and grace and people who say things like “sore-ry”, “for shoore”, , “right oun”, and “you bet”.