Interesting concept in Victoria!

Click here for the images from Canada (Vancouver/Victoria).

Day 6 – Took the 4.5-hour train ride from Courtenay to Victoria starting at 1:00pm. Along the way, a car almost hit us because the train was going on unmarked at-grade crossings! Sometimes there would only be an “X” meaning railroad crossing with nothing else. No lights, gates, bells, or even a stop sign! For a while, we were the only two people on the train. Chris wondered how they even made any money on this train. When we got to Victoria, we checked into our hotel and went to go look for something to eat. We ended up going to Café Mexico. That restaurant happened to be Victoria’s longest running Mexican restaurant. Chris was pissed off that they didn’t have free chips & salsa as an appetizer and he went on a tirade about this for about ten minutes. Anyways, we ordered and the food was surprisingly good for not seeing one Mexican person in Victoria at all. Later, in all the dining guides that we picked up suggested that you try the fresh chips and salsa. It must have been so good at Café Mexico that they could charge. I ordered a chimichanga and Chris ordered a burrito. Included on the plate were two chips that were the best chips ever. After eating dinner, we went to the liquor store to buy some beer. Chris of course, got something with 8.0% alcohol and we split a six-pack of Labatt Blue’s. We decided to go to Plan B that night and got there at around 10:30pm. I don’t think Victoria had a later last-call time than Vancouver (3:00am). I think it was just 2:00am. Anyways, we were there for quite some time. Unfortunately it was Saturday night and the place was full of kids (19 year-olds) and the DJ was playing really really bad music. It was as if he couldn’t do any beat mixing. I could have done a better job! I went home and went to sleep to get ready for the next day.

Day 7 – More of Victoria. We woke up early in order to get some breakfast. We ended up going to John’s Place which is sort of like Omelette Express. The food was good but the server would never come to us. We must have waited at least ten minutes just to get the check. After breakfast, we took the autobus out to Craigdarroch Castle. Admission was cheap for students and they even had this cool mechanical shoe cleaner. Inside the castle were the most extravagant things I’ve ever seen. Each room was hardwood with rugs and it was just so awesome to look at the stuff like the Breakfast Room or the Smoking room. It had about 26,000 square-feet! That is huge! After the castle, we headed back into town to prepare for The Butchart Gardens. During Christmas time, they light up the place with thousands of Christmas lights. We got there early so we could take the tour during the day and then again when they turned all the lights on. There was a cool theme, The Twelve Days of Christmas and each of the twelve items could be found in different parts of the park. The lights were truly a sight to see. We decided to eat dinner that night at the Irish Times pub down by the wharf. It was really nice inside and the Irish food was spectacular. After dinner, we walked around the waterfront and went to sleep early because legislature tours were supposed to start at 8:30am the next morning, or at least that’s what the guard said.

Day 8 – Woke up early to go to the legislature buildings tour. We get there at exactly 8:30am only to find that the tour doesn’t even start until 9:30am. The decision was made to do the self-guided tour. After about 20 minutes, everything started to get boring as almost every door was locked and there was no session going on with the legislature. We did get a picture of where they sat and that’s about it. We left and didn’t even come back to do the tour because the only cool part of the building was the outside. We walked to Floyd’s Diner, when is a very cool place to eat. Everybody inside there was cool and there were even these two old guys talking to us. Chris was wearing a “So-Cal Triathlon” shirt and one of the old guys thought that Chris was actually from so-cal. “He didn’t even buy that shirt from around here. He’s actually from so-cal,” is what he said. The reality is that Chris just bought that shirt from Aéropostale. We tried HP Sauce and it was just like an A1 sauce since it was offered to us at every restaurant we went to and got back to the hotel to leave for the bus to take us to the ferry. The bus ride to the ferry terminal was a double-decker. We sat on the very top and the driver was dangerous; constantly missing the limit-line at intersections, not stopping fully at stop signs, hitting tree branches, and almost hitting a power pole and a street light. The ride was good except there was this girl with the most annoying laugh in the world sitting behind us and laughing almost the whole way to the ferry. While waiting to get on the ferry to Vancouver, there were all these annoying babies crying for what seemed like forever. When we got on the ferry, the crying continued… There were many babies on that ferry and they were all making noise for the entire trip. The bus ride to the airport was un-eventful and so was the flight back to San Francisco. We had visited three major cities in less than 12-hours that day.

All images will soon be posted in the gallery.

Day 4 – Just explored Comox and Courtenay. The library in Courtenay looked like a ski lodge with books inside. There was even a nice fireplace. Also watched The Departed with Chris’ Uncle.

Day 5 – Went to Mount Washington for some snowshoeing action. The guides were awesome and it was snowing the entire duration of the tour.

Day 1 – Awake at 3am to catch an 8 o’clock flight in San Francisco. Security check was easy as none of us had to get searched extensively. The flight to Vancouver (YVR) was very calm. We arrived on time and taxied to the gate, which took forever. When we went through customs, each agent asked us about a million questions such as “Why are you here?, Why Mount Washington instead of Whistler?, Why go to Vancouver?, How long are you staying here?” After the airport, we got on the public transportation autobus to get to downtown Vancouver. While on the 98, we met Star, a University of British Columbia (UBC) student who told us which bus stop to get off and how to get to our hotel. We got to our hotel, the Blue Horizon and asked for an early check-in, in which they gladly obliged. They also upgraded us to a room with a balcony. After we checked in and dropped all of our bags off, we went to explore the downtown area. At the time, it was about 2pm and we decided to go eat lunch at Steamworks Brewery in the Gaslamp district. The food there was superb and the ketchup was the best I’ve ever had. It was their own label of ketchup. I had the Fish & Chips (“Best in town” and it was), and Chris had the Deluxe Burger (double smoked bacon, aged cheddar cheese, top quality meat, all for $10.95 CAD). After that, we checked out the Gaslamp district. We must have seen 20 homeless people, minimum. I don’t know how those guys survive the cold weather. Homeless people and beggars are such a common occurrence. Also, it seemed like almost on every other block, somebody was smoking marijuana. Everybody smoked cigarettes, even though they were $10 per pack! We walked to the Tim Horton’s and got some Timbits, which are doughnut holes, but way better. On the way back to the hotel, we went to the Pacific Centre, which is a mall that was partly underground. There was this one fancy store that we accidentally went into. It was like a Bloomingales or Nordstroms. After the mall, we went back to the hotel to watch some Canadian TV and relax after five hours of walking up and down hills. By the time we were finished, we went to the Vancouver Public Library. The first time we went to the library, there was a movie crew there filming a motion picture. This time, we went there to check out the free Internet. This library was huge; it had five usable stories, but it was six or seven stories total. We should have planned better because we were walking back to the hotel many times. Our room was on the 20th floor, so we had to take the elevator, which took a long time. Immediately after the library, we went to the hotel for a quick stop and then to the BC Liquor store. All the alcoholic beverages were controlled by the government and there were heavy levies for each beverage purchased. The sales tax in Vancouver was 16%. While inside the liquor store, we asked the clerk if there were any “forties”. She said she hasn’t seen any “forties” go through the “cash” (cashier/checkout). We ended up getting some good beers. I got Stella Atrois and Chris got something with 7.0% alcohol. We went out for pizza-by-the-slice after going to a regular pizza restaurant. All of the good pizza places were on Granville & Davie streets which were about 6-8 blocks away. While eating pizza, we drank our beers and charted out our plans for the night. We left the hotel room at about 10:15pm, and realized that it was way too early. Nobody was in any of the pubs. Instead of waiting around, we walked all the way down to Yaletown, which looked like the theatre district in Petaluma. It was pretty nice there, but again, nothing to do because it was too early. By the time we got back to Granville Street, we decided to go to The Roxy. At the door, you have to get wanded by the bouncer and some places required two pieces of photo identification. The cover was only $5 and there was a very good live band. When we got in, there were only a few dozen people there. As the night progressed, many more people entered and it was packed but not overcrowded. Inside, we met people from all over. We met Enrique from Guadalajara who said it took him 38 hours to get to San Diego. Chris met these guys from Colorado and one of them invited him to his house. There were also many Australians and New Zealanders. Though the place closed at 3am, we left at 2:30am after our ears were blasted. We danced for three straight hours with all the people in the club. I’ve never experienced a club with such great people and atmosphere. Chris truly loves the Canadians. On the way back to the hotel, we almost got accosted for money by some homeless guy who we saw at least four times earlier in the day. He was following us so we decided to run from him. We got back to the hotel and it was time to go to bed. I had been up for 24 hours.

Day 2 – Woke up and had grilled breakfast paninis at the IGA supermarket. We even ate them before we had paid for them! We caught the bus to Horseshoe Bay and took the ferry to Departure Bay in Nanaimo. From there, Aunt Sue drove us back to her house where we relaxed for the rest of the night. For dinner, we had homemade, delicious local sausage and pepperoni pizza. We filled up our “hay miles”.

Day 3 – We woke up and filled up our breakfast “hay mile” with thick buttermilk pancakes from scratch, local sausage links, farm-fresh eggs, Mennonite (Amish) strawberry jam, and genuine Canadian maple syrup. It kept us nourished for our long day on the slopes. The drive to get to Mount Washington took only 30 minutes. We got our rentals and hit the bunny slopes at around 11:30am. The snow up there was awesome. Chris went down the slopes in an almost straight line. He reached terminal velocity and then started zig-zagging. One time, he went down a trail that was actually a terrain park and he got like 3 feet of air. Most of the day was spent on the green trails and by the end of the day, it was getting extremely dark and cold. There was almost no contrast on the ground late in the afternoon. The sun sets at around 4:15pm. When we left the resort, it was starting to snow. We hitched a ride from two different people to get back into town. In general, the people are very nice and hitching a ride is much safer and more common, especially at a ski resort.