Day 8

After breakfast we set out to Butchart gardens. It’s on the way to the airport. It was created in 1921 in an exhausted limestone quarry. It’s probably the most popular tourist attraction in Victoria with over a million visitors each year. It seems like most of them are Chinese. Most of the visitors we saw in the gardens were Chinese, and most loud and rude. The garden itself is lovely with beautiful displays of millions of colorful flowers. All the flowers are lush and big, and the greenery is vibrant green -- so different from what we see at home. Impressions of Vancouver Island (which does not contain Vancouver city): Very pretty and well maintained; lots of water (see satellite photo); lots of greenery and large parks with abundant wildlife – birds and tons of deer everywhere. Victoria is an interesting city with many things to do and places to visit. You can get through the city itself in every direction in 20 minutes or so, but there was more urban sprawl outside and more traffic than we expected. It could have been because of many road construction projects. Everybody we encountered was very friendly and helpful. We saw a lot of happy and content people everywhere, and dogs, too. Not surprisingly, there’s a lot of great fish and seafood, but also beautiful organic fruits and vegetables that you can by at farms along the roads.

Day 7

After checking out we went looking for an attraction called “pot holes”. The first try was unsuccessful as we ended up in a very, very narrow winding road in the middle of a forest. We had to turn around and stopped at The Sooke museum/visitor center to get better directions. The museum is small, but interesting -- displaying artifacts of the history of the area. Then on to the pot holes, which is actually a large provincial park, very well organized , with multiple parking lots at various levels and a large camp grounds. The potholes are large rock pits on the Sooke river. Very picturesque and supposedly warmer than the ocean so people come to swim in them. We then met our friends, Pyx and Lorne, by a large recreation center where Pyx was installing her work (a beautiful sculpture of the robe of St. Francis made of paper mixed with local plants and flowers) for the annual Sooke art show. Then off to lunch. While driving we saw a street with Lorne’s surname. It is named after his grandfather who was a prominent settler of the area. After lunch we visited a very picturesque Becher beach in east Sooke. There was nice fine sand here as opposed to the previous beaches which were all rocks. Calm water but too cold for swimming. Then headed home to Victoria with a stop at Canadian Tire – large store and a Canadian institution where we bought a set of very cute camp lanterns, which we first saw in our hotel. We had a nice dinner at home and a long conversation about Canada’s First Nations and their cultural traditions. Lorne is very familiar with their culture as he had worked with indigenous people for many years.

Day 6

After breakfast we set out for Sooke, it’s 30 mi. from Victoria. Our hotel was not accepting check in so we went for a drive. The next village was Shirley and we stopped at Shirley Delicious for coffee and cake. The next stop was French beach. The beach is quite different from beaches we are used to. It is cold and no swimmers. The brave people on the beach are all behind driftwood for protection from the wind. We collected several small oddly-shaped pieces of drift wood. The pretty large ones ended up in the camera. The next stop was China beach. We were actually looking for Mystic beach and drove quite a ways north in search of a sign, but finally we gave up and turned around. After parking by China beach, we found out that there is 40-minute trail from there that leads to Mystic beach and that’s the closest you can get to it by car. By then it was too late to get started…We have been to China beach in Vietnam, hot – now China beach Vancouver island, in the 60s mid-July. On the drive back we stopped at Shirley Delicious an had a great snack in their outdoor garden. Our room was ready for check in and then we went for a walk on the spit. Beautiful views, warm weather, and lots of dogs. Our hotel (Sooke Harbor House) is well known for its food – all locally grown (they have a garden on their premises) and beautifully prepared so we had dinner in the hotel restaurant and were not disappointed.

Day 5

We embarked on a guided tour of Cowichan Valley (south Vancouver island) with our host, Lorne, as our guide. He and his ancestors have lived here for 4 generations. First stop was a beautiful nature preserve called Goldstream Provincial Park. We walked among very, very tall and incredibly straight Douglas firs to the river estuary. We were quite impressed with the beauty and maintenance of the place. The visitor center was the best we have ever seen. From there we drove to Merridale Cidery. We got an education of alcoholic apple cider. We had a nice lunch in the cidery’s restaurant and tried a sampling of various ciders they produce. From there we went to the Cherry Point Estate winery, one of many wineries in the valley. The countryside here is quite nice – rolling hills surrounded by higher mountains. From there we went to Cowichan Bay, a very picturesque shipping village where Lorne met many friends. Salmon comes to spawn in this area in the fall and there’s thousands of them in the water. We stopped at an art gallery owned by Lorne’s friend, a very well know indigenous artist Arthur Vickers. We admired his wooden bentwood boxes and his gold leaf paintings.

Day 4

In the morning we walked to Empress hotel hoping to get a last minute reservation for high tea, but there were no slots available. We then took a boat tour up to the Gorge point. The tours are in little 8-10 seat boats with the captain doing narration. In addition to the gorge tour, there is also a harbor tour, which is shorter and much more popular. The same kind of boats, but painted yellow, serve as water taxis. At first, we thought we’d be the only people on this tour, but at the last moment we were joined by a man with a young girl. The tour lasted about 75 minutes and the captain gave us a lot of interesting historical info about the city of Victoria, the buildings and communities along the way. The Victoria harbor is very busy - excursion boats, water taxis, ferries to Seattle, Vancouver, and points north, and sea planes with 130 landings a day. Then we walked to Chinatown, which is not big, but it’s the oldest Chinatown in North America. In the evening we walked to fisherman’s wharf for dinner. It’s a fun area with a bunch of fish shacks and a lot of outdoor seating. The we took one of the little harbor tour boats back to the harbor. Later in the evening our hosts drove us to a small coffee shop in West Victoria where their musician friends were playing. It was nice jazzy music. We stayed there until about 10 pm.

Day 3

We walked to Moca via Beacon Hill park and encountered two herons, one by the pond and one on top of a tree, and a young deer on our way. After our morning coffee we embarked on a walking tour. This route took us through a non-tourist part of town. First was the Victoria art gallery with interesting exhibitions of local artists. One of the most prominent and beloved is Emily Carr. We had never heard of her before, but she is very famous here so it was great to see several of her paintings in the gallery. She was also a writer, and she lived a couple of blocks from where we are staying so we passed by her childhood home yesterday. It was also nice to see paintings by our hostess, Pyx, at the gallery. Then we walked to Craigdarroch castle, which was built in 1890 for a coal baron Robert Dunsmir, a Scotsman, who unfortunately died before the castle was finished. The family only lived there for 18 years. It’s a huge structure (25,500 square feet) with 20+ bedrooms, etc so later it was used as a military hospital, and then a student dorm. It’s a tourist attraction that we could have done without. Then a very long walk to Abkhazi gardens via the Governor’s House and gardens, which was supposed to be a shortcut, but turned out to be anything but. We were foot sore so we went to the tea shop for lunch first. Good food but bad coffee, but we should have known better than to order coffee in a tea room. Abkhazi garden has a very romantic history connected to an English woman and a Georgian prince who were separated by war and reunited in 1946. They settled in Victoria and established this not very big, but lovely garden. After lunch and garden, another long walk back home…In the evening we walked to a local bistro for dinner then to the harbor for night time view.

Day 2

On the way to our hosts’ favorite café (Moca), we walked through the magnificent Beacon Hill park with millions of colorful flowers and tons of very large trees. In the winter all the flowers are dug up and put in greenhouses. After morning coffee we went to the Royal BC museum located next to the parliament building, which is spectacular The museum is very interesting and focused mostly on British Columbia’s nature and history. The most spectacular part is the section on the cultures of the BC’s First Nations (that’s how they call Native tribes here). Generally, it seems, there is a lot more attention and respect here for these indigenous peoples and their cultures than in the US. After food truck lunch we walked to the harbor. It’s a very busy place with lots of yachts, water taxis, excursion boats, ferries, and sea planes. We strolled the main tourist shopping street (Government Street) and walked home to have Prosecco to celebrate Bo’s birthday. We took a taxi to a great fish restaurant overlooking the harbor (Blue Crab), and then took a long walk home around the Fisherman’s Warf and the cruise harbor. Lorne told us that there are often two or three cruise ships docked there, but this time there was only one. It was a big Carnival ship with probably about 4000 passengers on board.

Day 1 arrival

Easy flights. We arrived at Seattle 30 minutes early so we were able to take an earlier flight to Victoria. From the airport we took a scenic route to Victoria with a stop at our favorite Canadian fast food – Tim Horton. The lush gardens and flowers are in abundance and are gorgeous. We settled in to our nice accommodation at our hosts’ appropriately Victorian (built circa 1900) house and had a nice dinner in their backyard garden. After dinner, our hostess Pyx took us on orientation walk. The harbor is only a few minutes’ walk from the house. The harbor was very lively with lots of tourists and locals enjoying the beautiful weather.

Preamble

This is our 62 trip together. Seven days in Victoria BC staying at friends' house,which is a large Victorian house. We will be escaping the California heat wave.