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Published: June 19th 2009
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After spending our first night in Victoria in, where else but Walmart, we decided to head down town and take a look around. After having some difficulties finding free parking, we gave up and paid a whole $2 an hour for parking. We walked around downtown for a while going into a whole bunch of bookstores, pawn shops, CD shops and cute little boutique stores. Then, being a Sunday we found some markets (only a tiny strip but better than nothing) and looked at all the crafty stuff (so cultured we are). We had a quick bite to eat and a stall from the markets before continuing our journey into china town. Fun fact: Victoria’s china town is the oldest in Canada. Anywho so we continued on and went into an old school record store where I really just felt out of place cos I don’t know how to use that ancient technology but I did think of dad and all his useless records (just kidding love you dad). We also checked out Market square but being a Sunday a lot of things were closed. After all this walking we were dying from thirst and I decided I felt like a
milkshake, having not had one in several years we discovered that milkshakes were a dying trend left behind with yo-yos and pokemon. We tried cafes, ice cream shops and pubs (little desperate I know) and could not find one anywhere. Eventually I settled for just water with a side of half a tub of icecream. That night we found a skatepark which, fortunately for me had a wireless internet conection. Bam. We had a lovely dinner of schnitzels, salad and homemade potato chips. Delish.
On Monday it was decided an educational visit to the BC Museum would be good. Once we got there and realised it was going to be $18 (and that was student prices an adult was $27) we nearly reconsidered but wed already paid for parking and we went for it. They had an exhibit borrowed from the British museum which went through the different times it started with Egyptians, then went to Middle-Eastern, and whole bunch of other stuff which was quite interesting. Although we did observe a complete lack in museum etiquette, old people were standing 3cm away from the displays so no one else could get a look in. But if you stood
back so that everyone could see, some old codger would come stand right in front of you. The injustice of it all. Australia was mentioned once in the whole exhibit, which I suppose is better than nothing at all. We also checked out the natural history exhibits but did the second one in a half hour at a run cost the parking money was running out. Then we went to a cute little area called Oak Bay where there was some more book stores and other cute little stores and even an old English pub.
After staying at the skate park again we went to go see Craigdarroch Castle, which was in the middle of suburbia. Not so impressive. As well as finding out that it cost $12 to go inside, we instead conducted our own tour around the castle, making sure to peak in the back windows to see what we were missing out on. Didn’t look like much so $12 was well saved. We then went and did a quick drive by of the University as a friend of ours will be going their in September. After both of us buying a few books in the past
couple of days it didn’t take much to decide to head to Willow Park, a place that had a playground, grass and a beach (and now the term is used correctly as we are on the ocean) where we had sandwiches. We had even splurged and bought a lemon meringue pie (it was on sale) and as I wanted to savour the treat I saved some of my half to have later. As we left to get dinner supplies I forgot to late that it had been left on top of the stove and as we went around the corner it slammed into the door becoming a complete mush. Devastation ensued but the pie was slightly salvaged and able to be eaten. We spent most the afternoon lying on the beach reading (in jeans and jumpers and wrapped in a blanket as a nice cold front had appeared). We stayed for dinner which was a tasty pork stirfry - complete with beans and carrots, and just ended up staying the night.
Wednesday was spent mainly lying on the beach, relaxing and reading. I had discovered a cold beach showed at the end of the toilet block and after taking
a quick dip in the freezing cold ocean headed over with my shampoo and conditioner to wash my hair. I got a few weird looks, especially as there was no one actually in the water cos it was too cold, but I hoped it just looked like i was very superficial about my hair and couldn’t let it dry without first rinsing the sea water from it. Nevermind that the shower alone gave me brain freeze, I was very determined to have clean hair. And clean hair I got.
In the late afternoon I became restless and decided that an activity needed to be achieved to compensate all the lazing around. We headed on over to Fisherman’s Wharf, a cute little place with houses attached to the pier (very cool and not too expensive, some people had little shops operating out of the bottom level and lived on the top. But mainly they were just peoples homes). There were a few fish and chip shops and a dock performer which was cool. We also overheard a tour guide saying you could buy fish to feed the seal, so we decided to try it out. We bought two fish to
feed the big seal and managed to feed him without getting our arms bitten off. I even made him spin around before I fed him. We returned to our faithful park for a less luxurious dinner of mac and cheese (the budgets getting tighter and our wallets slimmer - gone are the days of steak). Which has actually made us think about getting jobs - that’s as far as its gotten though so I’ll be sure to keep you updated.
Thursday and we decided to go to the Sooke potholes, about a 40 min drive from Victoria (which I drove - im getting very competent on this side of the road). Once we got there we packed our bags with books, jumpers and food ready for a small hike. Zach fixed his footwear (he left his thongs at the beach, and had to duck tape the dodgy $2 ones I gave him to his feet). We explored through the potholes and walked up the river jumping from rock to rock. At one stage we ran out of rocks and I was hesitant to walk through the water and thought we should turn back and go around, zach insisted that
the water was “only knee deep”. So he stepped off the rock into waste deep water completely soaking his jeans and further breaking the thongs. I nearly wet myself with laughter as he climbed back and thought that yes maybe we should go around. We eventually found a nice little pool where we went swimming and jumped off a little cliff (not before I insisted that Zach swim around to make sure there were no logs or anything lurking underneath). We headed back and found another beach where we spent the rest of the afternoon reading and having boat races (my boat - the HMAS Kickass won in both the rapid race and the calm water race). We once again spent the night at Willow Park after an amazing mac and cheese dinner (again) I added some tuna to mine which gave it a bit more pizzaz.
Today was spent downtown in Services Canada looking for jobs. We found a few good leads that hopefully wont keep us tied down for very long but we’ll see how it all goes. Ahh back to the real world.
That is us up to date, tune in next week to see
how the job hunt goes.
xox
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Museum Fun!
Love to hear about your museum visits - even the suckers that you do in half hour at a run! Although it does seem that the standard of dinners is deteriorating...Good luck with the job hunting baby - but remember if you can't find a job you can always come home. Love you xxx