Hey there,
I was in Victoria over the weekend - a nice city, very pretty, but a little on the sleepy side...but that's okay - nice and relaxing. I went over with a bunch of 8 Aussie and Kiwi friends on satdee morn, and after spending satur-day and night with them, i took Sunday arvo by myself, leaving my mates to do their own thing, and came back late Sunday night after spending the arvo with a buddy of mine, Mike, and his wife Kristin, who live there.
Victoria, with a smallish population of only 300,000, is on Vancouver Island and is British Columbia's capital city. Despite being only 100Km's away, it takes about 3 1/2 hours to get there, involving a cumbersome bus, ferry, bus transfer. it's all worth it tho, the ferry ride thru the Gulf Islands being especially pretty. I was hoping to catch a peek of the Orca whale pods that play in these waters this time of year, but alas, we had no luck.
The city itself is famed for being Canada's most 'British' city, with a lot its architecture and streetscapes trying to somewhat recreate an Olde English feel. The Parliament Buildings, built in 1893 by a 25 year old architect, in a Gothic style with the pale grey granite stone block structure with dome-topped turret towers and cuppola-roof, set on immaculately groomed lawn and gardens is most successful in this regard. Its setting right on the foreshore marina just adds an extra element of beauty to the scene.
Just a few minutes walk along the marina, the epic-sized 5-star Empress Hotel, with its groomed hedges and creeping vine covered exterior is another fine example of the refined British syle of this city. At any rate, it makes for a pleasant, quiet and leisurely stroll.
Our group had split up and gone in various directions, and I was hanging with Robbo and Jen as we casually took in the city, before heading off to Beacon Hill Park to throw the frisbee around for a while.
The interior of the park, with its Victorian landscape of manicured flowerbeds, graceful trees and lakes and bridged streams, has a life all its own, as do its local fauna residents, especially it seems the goats. Jen had gone off for a walk and spotted a flock of goats in the park, and came back to us, all excitedly wanting to tell us about these goats who could talk, and said 'yee-aaa-hhhhhh' with cheeky grins all the time. But these talking goats also have mystical invisibility powers too apparently, as we could not see them when she took us to the spot. I've gotta say, I have NO idea what kind of flowers she was sniffing in the park. At the very southern end of the park, there is an open vista over the beach, and across the Strait of Juan De Fuca, leading out to the open waters of the Pacific Ocean, with oceanside bluffs where kite enthusiasts, paragliders, sailboarders and radio-controlled airplane buffs all have room to take advantage of the distinctive landscape. Unfortunately, we never made it down that far, having being distracted by a game of local cricket going on at one of the ovals within the park, where a rather tubby Brian Lara look-a-like was tearing the bowlers apart in front of the quaint old-styled clubhouse and scoreboard. Who ever thought Canadians played cricket!! Well, I guess that's one of the things that makes this such a British city.
Eventually, our stomachs tooks charge of our actions and we met the rest of the group for dinner at The Sticky Wicket pub. You've gotta check out this pub - its enormous, has about 8 different bars in there, generally set out with stylish, plush decor, and dark oak wooden bars and staircases leading up and down the various split levels. The style factor is toned down a tad at one bar called Big Bad John's, which is set up like a hick country/western tavern, but with the charming addition of hundreds of pairs of bras and knickers and panties dangling from the low ceiling!!! (not kidding!!)
Also, they have a rooftop bar with 2 full-size beach volleyball courts!! You can rent them by the hour (for $30) so we planned to do that on the Sunday.
One of the lads, Kiwi Steve, was having his birthday this weekend, so the evening meal and bevvy session was bound to be big. And Steve is a big, big lad, some 6 foot 4 tall and over 100Kg's, so i'm not sure if the word 'big' would be enough to cover it. I was relatively restrained tho, well aware of the massive wads of $$$ leaving my wallet in recent times, but still managed a good night at the 3 bars that made our mini pub-crawl, taking in The Sticky Wicket, The Irish Times (where shots of sambuca and tequila - not together - were the order of the day), and finally Steamers, where Mike caught up with us, and a local Victoria band, Machina, was playing in the background. From memory, I thought they were okay, but their peroxide blonde chick bass guitarist was hot hot hot!
Sunday, after a $5 greasy spoon brekky, served up by a surly, bald-headed-and-goateed-and-built-like-a-brick-outhouse cook, was, despite a collective boozy hangover, time for our beach volleyball mini-tourney. I hadn't played this sport in some years, and was decidedly rusty. Teams were randomly selected, and players traded between teams from time to time, and without keeping strict score, i'd say i ended up on the winning side more often than not. After an hour of pretty intense activity tho, we were all beaten - some by injury, others by fatigue, and the rest by their hangovers! Good fun all round nonetheless.
It was at this point that I parted the ways with the lads and ladettes, and slowly strolled the 20minute walk thru the cute suburb of James' Bay to Mike and Kristin's house to chill out, chat and relax, mere blocks away from the beach I'd never made it to the day before. I'd met Mike in Edinburgh on my 26th birthday pub crawl in 2000, and was now hanging out with him for the 2nd time in a month in 2005!! I love it!! A quiet stroll along that beach, a delicious smoked salmon pasta dinner and a DVD (Team America: World Police - incredibly funny, and highly recommended), then all of a sudden it was time to head back.
Being incredibly tired and lazy, I opted to pay the extra $15 for the comfort of the Greyhound bus and ferry ride back, rather than deal with the hassle of changing 3 times, and knowing that I was getting back at close to Midnight, it was an easy decision to make.
On the journey back, I met a Northern Irish girl and a Glaswegian travelling together - and just hearing the accents pricked my ears, and I had to chat to them. She was well impressed that I picked her accent correctly, commenting that she always gets mistaken for every other accent imaginable in the region- English, Scots, Welsh, Republican Irish. These guys were mad...they were doing Canada in 3 weeks!!! - and had taken in Montreal, Quebec City,Toronto, Banff, Whistler, Vancouver and Victoria in that time!!! They were flying everywhere admittedly, but they were travelling on British Pounds so i guess could afford to.
So another busy rapid-fire weekend thoroughly enjoyed.
talk soon, tony
