Vancouver Island

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So over the weekend we went to Vancouver Island.. Yaaay, new stuff to see! You might remember that on my flight from LA to Vancouver I met an old man who told me that Vancouver Island was the same size as Australia. Silencio old man.. you are so wrong!

Last week was a pretty normal week, with work etc. Thursday night we played Trivia and had a few drinks at the Beaver. Our team was called Fireball Whiskey (as an ode to last Friday). We got perfect rounds for the music and movie rounds, and 12/20 for the general knowledge round. We actually won! Wooooo! Our prize was a trip to Whistler for one. How useful. We’re going to try and win a few more times so a group of us can go. I couldn’t believe we won, seriously.

I had put off packing during the week, as I do.. So had to pack at the last minute on Friday night after work. After I packed I met the girls at the hostel. Because we were leaving so early in the morning I decided to stay at the Samesun with them, instead of travelling into the city from the burbs. I knew that the Samesun wasn’t as nice as the HI, but goodness me was I shocked. The beds were the squeakiest things ever, the room cramped as all hell, there was no lift, the staff had to go get keys recut, so we didn’t get keys til late, and all you could hear was the noise of the street outside. Ahh well, it was a bed I guess. Erin and Vanessa have stayed at the hostel for almost two months, and Friday was their last night there.. Their house was finally ready to be moved into.

We had dinner and a few drinks at the Beaver that night, nothing too exciting happened, but I did get to speak with Tara which was nice. Gossip sessions are always fun, and we had a fair amount of goss to catch up on! They’ve just started closing Granville st off to traffice on a Friday and Saturday night, so I was standing in the middle of the road the entire time I was talking to her. We got a relatively early night so we would have more chance of being fresh as daisies in the morning.

We woke up at the crack of dawn and met Mary-Anne at Maccas for breakfast (Vanessa was going to cook us pancakes but the batter was old and resembled cottage cheese)
The bus ride to the Tsawwassen ferry terminal felt like the longest of my life. We had to stand and it was hot and muggy in there, felt like I was going to vomit. For the past week I had felt sick each morning and vomited on a few occasions (don’t worry.. it’s not that) so I wasn’t feeling optimistic about the boat ride. The boat ride to Vancouver Island was really nice. Takes about 1.5 hours and you see lots on the way there. We even saw dolphins and seals! Only their heads popping out of the water though, so there are no photos. We arrived on the island and had yet another hideously long bus ride to get to Victoria. We finally got to our hostel to find that it was a 20 bedder! The boys dormitory has 45 beds! OMG put us in there! I’ve never been in such a large room, the one at HI was four beds ad Samesun was 6, so this was a surprise. It really wasn’t too bad though.

We went to explore Victoria.. My god it’s beautiful. It’s so green and there are plants and flowers everywhere, boats in the harbour, cool lamp posts, decorated whale statues.. Just a really pretty city. We went to the Royal London Wax Museum which was a bit of a let down cause it was mainly full of British Royalty. Dull! We then made our way back to the hostel. Erin and Maryanne wandered off while Vanessa and I had fun taking photos of anything and everything. We finally made it back to the hostel to find that the other girls were waiting on us cos I had the keys to our locker. Oops!
We prettied ourselves up a bit and headed over to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. I had a chimichanga or something.. soooooo yum! We then headed back to the Harbour to look at everything again, and lay on the grass for an hour or so. Took a few more photos, as the city is even prettier when it’s lit up!

We got a reasonably early night again as we were beggared from all the walking we had done that day. The next morning we all woke up at different times so we could shower at different times. The showers were effing awful. It was a bathroom with 6 showers basically. No room to change without being seen, unlike other hostels. I know that these places exist, but I didn’t expect it from a HI in Canada. Some of the other girls didn’t seem to care (the Europeans mostly) they wandered around topless, but we are all prudes and shared tips on how to shower without being seen. We all felt like eggs or something big for breakfast, but seriously couldn’t find anything that opened before 9. Devastated. Maccas it is! We saw so many homeless people. There are lots in Vancouver, but it seemed bad here because there aren’t as many regular people around. You can’t escape them!

We sat outside a church for about an hour and a half waiting for our Big Bus hop on hop off tour. We didn’t check the timetable, and just assumed that it would start at 9. How wrong we were. So many bums were begging outside the church. By so many I mean 4 or 5, but still. One of them was clearly not a bum, and more likely a drug dealer. Two old men came past on separate occasions and gave him what looked like packets of socks, but would have been drugs. Shifty. One bum with a trolley came and asked us if we go to church, in an accusatory way. None of us do.. In the end it came out that he sometimes goes to church, but was planning on going in after the service for the free meal they put on. Dodgy. Finally our bus came and we were on our way.

Although Victoria is pretty, there really aren’t very many exciting things to do.. Not enough to justify having a hop on hop off bus anyway. We saw a lot of houses and a gold course. We got off at Craigdarroch castle which was cool from the outside, but pretty much exactly the same as the Werribee Mansion on the inside. We then went to the markets in Chinatown and I wanted to get my tragis re-pierced, but both the tattoo shops had given their piercers the day off. Boo. We went to the Spaghetti Factory for tea. Vanessa & Erin had spoken about it a few times, so I was glad to try it. It’s pretty good food and really good value. I had a few of these frozen drinks that I forget the name of, but they were really really nice. We then walked back to the hostel via the waterfront for yet another early night. Such a PG weekend!

The next morning we went and had Maccas for breakfast again (dear god) and watched some of the Victoria Day parade. God how Canadians love their marching bands! There were so so many. The only photos I took were of a few dogs that were in the parade, a horse, and some guys on penny farthings. There was even a section where the homeless marched along asking for more houses or something. Vanessa had joked that they would tag along at the end, but I was surprised that they were actually part of the parade! We were contemplating joining it ourselves.. why not?

We had planned to go to the Butchart Gardens, but it was raining all day Monday so we didn’t. It had been really nice for a few days, so it was no surprise that it turned shitty really. We decided that we’d come back for a day trip another weekend, instead of going while it was raining and not enjoying it as much as we could have.

We had the buffet on the ferry on the way back which was really good, then we parted ways and I fell asleep really early.

Sorry for the ridiculous amount of detail here.. it’s because it’s all fresh in my mind!

The next trip to look forward to is the biggie in July.. yay!

xx

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Comments

[Kat]

Victoria?
It's so refreshing to see green grass and trees that are alive! Not something we get much of down here at the moment. Glad you had a good time, but next time, go somewhere more party animal like so I get boy goss! xx

[Vanessa]

LOL
My fav part of this blog is: 'Vanessa had joked that they would tag along at the end, but I was surprised that they were actually part of the parade!' So true! I got photos of them too! We have to swap!!!

[kirsterellie]

I'm not surprised that your favourite part of this blog is about you :P Yes we do have to make swapsies!