Victoria

Nik and James's apartment is the ground floor of an old,three story heritage house. The rooms are large with nice high ceilings. The sitting room was my bedroom, that I shared with Louie the dog and sometimes Jingles, the cat. I woke up on Wednesday morning and James had prepared a breakfast of sourdough pancakes, of course, with maple syrup. Nice start to the day. Then I was off to play tourist and headed to down town Victoria , which is only a twenty minute walk away. I went into the little China town, then over to the Empress hotel. The Empress hotel is Victoria's Peninsula Hotel, it was built at the turn of the twentieth century and has stood as a Victoria landmark since then. When Queen Elizabeth II visited Victoria this is where she stayed. It overlooks Victoria harbour and they even serve afternoon tea. Off to the left of the hotel is the Victoria Parliament building, Victoria is the Capital of British Columbia. Quite why they put it on an island,that can still be difficult to get to, is anybodies guess. I went inside, it is a beautiful building and I even got to see the parliament in action. They weren't talking about anything very interesting, insurance legislation I think, and they weren't very many people in the chamber.
I headed back around the Harbour and went to Red Fish,Blue Fish for lunch. James had recommended this spot as having the best fish and chips in Victoria, he said I should have the salmon. So I did and he was right, the food was really good and they had real vinegar! After lunch I decided that I needed a bit of exercise and so went to Beacon Hill park. I wandered around, read a little and generally relaxed more than I walked. I guess my stomach just digested lunch instead of me working it off. Then I headed to the public library , the building isn't as impressive as Vancouver's or Seattle's but it had everything I needed. When I was done I walked back to the house. Nik loaded up James and Louie and we went down to the beach for a walk. I have been so lucky on this trip so far, the day had been beautiful and warm and we were having a beautiful sunset to finish it off. James wanted to cook but he was out voted by Nik and I, we ordered pizza, eaten at home with beer. An excellent first day in Victoria.

My second day started with a Japanese style breakfast, served in multiple dishes and eaten with chopsticks. It is a James and Niks dream to open a ryokan, I would definitely stay there on the strength of breakfast alone! I had a slow start and enjoyed coffee with Nik before facing the city once again. Not that it is a tough place to walk around, unlike Seattle and San Francisco there are no major hills to negotiate, it's all pretty level. My destination was not downtown this time, it was to a historic old house called Craigdarroch castle, in the Rockland area of Victoria. This house was built by the coal millionaire Robert Dunsmuir, he however, never got to live in it. He died before it was completed, it's the same situation as Randolph Hearst and his big house in California. I am sure there is a moral here somewhere. Mr Dunsmuirs family, did want to live in the house, at least for another generation. His wife, Joan, moved in with five of her daughters and two grandchildren. When she died the daughters sold the house and all went their separate ways.

The house is amazing and does look like a miniature French chateau, complete with round tower at the front of the house. When it was sold by the Dunsmuir family, the new owner couldn't afford the mortgage, sound familiar? The bank repossessed it and it passed through a variety of hands before being rescued and preserved as a museum. They are in the midst of restoring part of the gardens. It originally sat on 28 acres, but this land was parcelled up and sold off for housing. The house in this area are some of the nicest real estate in Victoria. I walked through the area to the Governors House, nice gardens. Do not know what the house is like inside, you can't go in. From here it was a gentle walk back into down town and to the library. I then treated myself to ice cream, there is a famous ice cream shop in Victoria, so of course I had to sample the wares, all part of the tourist experience.The ice cream was good. I took a slow walk back to the house. We had an early dinner and headed to the cinema.

James and Nik had agreed to my request to go and see a movie. While I had been in Japan I had watched some recorded videos with Canadian t.v. on, one of the programmes was "Trailer Park Boys". When I first watched it I thought it was a documentary, but I soon realised that it wasn't. There is no clever plot line, but I liked the characters and it always made me laugh. And now they have a movie! Nik explained that this was actually the second movie, but that the first hadn't been that great. Off we went. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, it was the first one I had seen since I had arrived in North America. Considering the movie, that's nothing to boast about.