A week on Vancouver Island, Post 2

Continuing on from Post 1...

On Sunday, May 26th, we left Jason and Rachel's home in Nanaimo and drove a couple of hours south to Victoria, the capital of BC. There we checked into the Helm's Inn for the next 3 nights. This inn calls itself "Victoria's best kept secret", and I have to say we agreed! It's located in the Inner Harbour district (although doesn't have a harbour view), right next door to the Royal BC Museum, and is very affordable considering the fantastic location. We would definitely stay there again!

That evening we walked to IMAX Victoria, which is located in the Royal BC Museum, and saw The Last Reef (click here for trailer). It was fascinating... not the same as diving, but the closest we can get to it at the moment! Finley ate/slept through the documentary - he's such a great little traveller!

On Monday, we visited the famous Butchart Gardens. I had already been there twice before, and Ben had been once, but it was just as spectacular as ever. We enjoyed showing Jenny around the gardens (Jim is less excited about such things, so he wandered off on his own!), and snapped a few nice photos. It was a rainy day, but that didn't dampen (hehe) our enthusiasm too much!

That evening we had dinner at a Boston Pizza on the way back to our hotel.

On Tuesday morning, we saw another IMAX movie, as we'd purchased double passes the first night. This time we saw Forces of Nature (click here for trailer), which was about tornadoes, volcanoes and earthquakes. Scary and awe-inspiring!

After that, we wandered around the Inner Harbour for a while, admiring the stately Parliament Buildings and Fairmont Empress Hotel, and watching the horses and carriages waiting for tourists willing to pay $50+ for a 15 minute ride.

Parliament Buildings

Fairmont Empress

In the early afternoon, we did a free tour of the Parliament Buildings. Delle and I had done this tour in 2009 and it was still very interesting!

We then headed in the direction of downtown Victoria, where we ate a mid-afternoon lunch at Pig BBQ Joint. On the way back to our hotel, we wandered in and out of souvenir shops, enjoyed some fancy gelato, and walked through the Empress to show Jim and Jenny the posh and well-known afternoon tea setting.

After relaxing in our room for a while, we headed out again at nightfall to see the Inner Harbour after dark. Finley snuggled up and had a sleep inside Jim's vest, as was his frequent habit on this trip! The golden lights lining the edges of the Parliament Buildings make it look very beautiful and exotic at night. It was certainly Finley's most spectacular bedtime feed location to date - and so nice that our hotel was close enough that I could carry our sleeping boy back to bed in my arms afterwards!

Parliament Buildings

Fairmont Empress

The next day, Wednesday, May 29th, we checked out of our hotel and then spent a few hours driving slowly up the coast to the town of Sidney, where we were to catch the 3pm ferry back to the mainland. We drove past lots of huge houses and windswept beach vistas, and even had time for a quick visit to the Sidney office of Ben's work, where his Island colleagues were excited to meet Finley!

And that was our week on Vancouver Island! It was so nice to have a holiday-within-a-holiday with Jim and Jenny. They definitely appreciated getting to spend a whole week with Ben when he didn't have to go to work. We enjoyed exploring Vancouver Island in a little more depth and look forward to getting back over there when we can!