Vancouver Island

Hi all,

We’ve had a great but big day today. We did a day trip to Vancouver Island which required getting to the airport, hiring a car and then catching a ferry. As a result we were up at 5.15am and are looking forward to a longer sleep in than that tomorrow! But it was well worth it. Vancouver Island is massive, and we just scratched the surface today. If we ever return I would quite like to stay on the island. It’s half the area of Tasmania just to put it into perspective.

We picked up our car and boarded the ferry to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. En route we noticed that the roads and conditions are a bit more like home here, with people driving normal sized cars instead of the monster trucks many drive in the USA. The Uber driver to the airport was about the fourth person to comment on how lucky we are with the weather. It was 18 and sunny today, and the next two days are 23 and sunny. It’s the warmest weather they’ve had here for months, and the radio announcer even commented on the “hot weather” coming up. Up until we arrived, the maximum temperature had been single digits and it had been raining a fair bit. Bringing my travel umbrella with me continues to work!

We enjoyed the 1.5 hour ferry ride but sadly didn’t see any whales. Once we disembarked we drove to the Butchart Gardens. Pa’s memory was going over the last couple of years, but when I would talk to him about where we were going on this trip, he would consistently mention how wonderful Butchart Gardens were, so we knew we had to go. In 1904, Jennie Butchart and her husband moved to the site of today’s gardens from Ontario and built a cement plant at a limestone deposit. As cement production exhausted the limestone deposits, Jennie decided to create a garden in its place and began moving top soil by horse and cart to what is now the Sunken Garden, the section you walk into first. In this section you can still see a kiln chimney in the background which is all that remains of the plant today.

The gardens were magnificent, particularly considering that the site started off as a quarry and was then converted into the gardens. I can’t adequately put into words just how beautiful they were, and I’ll let the photos do most of the talking. But I can see why they stuck in Pa’s memory despite his memory loss, and why he and Nan enjoyed them so much. At the back of the Sunken Garden we enjoyed sitting in the sun watching the Ross Fountain that Jennie’s grandson Ian Ross installed in 1964. I had brought some postcards with me that Nan and Pa sent me on their trip and on the front of one of them was this fountain.

We then made our way past a carousel, some totem poles, the Japanese Garden, the Rose Garden and the Italian Garden. There were no roses as they’ll be out in summer, but we saw many gorgeous tulips, daffodils and blossom trees in particular. The smells in the garden were fantastic and it was hard to imagine it being even better in a couple of months when everything is blooming in summer. We agreed we think this season was great though as it wasn’t as crowded as summer will be.

We loved once again that people could bring their dogs here. We also loved how respectful everyone was of the flowers and garden beds. Very different to Tesselaar at home in the hills where people stomp on the flowers to take a photo. The gardening team here obviously take a lot of pride in caring for the garden too, as there was constant trimming, sweeping and lawn mowing going on. The grass looked like carpet.

We enjoyed a brownie and a hot chocolate at the cafe after two wonderful hours at the garden, and then drove to a random beach en route to Victoria called Willows Beach. Because of the beautiful weather, many people were out sunbaking and two were even swimming in bikinis! This was particularly funny as you could see snowy mountains in the distance. We enjoyed a nice walk in the sun and a swing at the picturesque park here. It was nice seeing and hearing people appreciating the warmth.

Our final stop for the day was Victoria. Captain Cook arrived at Vancouver island in 1778, and with him was English navigator George Vancouver. He returned in 1792 to survey the island. In 1843 a town was established where today’s Victoria is, first called Fort Camosun, then Fort Albert then Fort Victoria. It was started as a base for the Hudson’s Bay Company for trading fur. In 1849 Vancouver Island became a British crown colony and in 1871 it became part of Canada.

It felt strange reading 'Victoria' everywhere given that it’s the state we live in back home. We had a laugh when a ‘Victoria Police’ car drove past. The city was beautiful, and more chilled out than Vancouver from what we can tell so far (definitely less druggies….!). We were treated to more sun and more gorgeous flowers. We parked the car and walked past the Empress Hotel. I photographed another postcard from Nan and Pa and funnily enough we found an exact replica of it in a souvenir shop! The photo would be about 25 years old at this point. We continued on to the parliament building and then headed to Government Street which was a bit like Bourke Street at home. Here we sat at a pub in an old bank building (beautiful!) and had a late lunch and a happy hour drink in the sun. There were some other lovely buildings too. Afterwards we wandered up to Chinatown (a large Chinese population came here due to the gold rush) and then Rob got an ice cream.

We caught the ferry back and saw a lovely sunset, then dropped the car off and caught the train and bus back. Overall it’s been a 16 hour day which may sound exhausting, but truth be told because the middle of the day was at a leisurely pace and lots of sitting in the sun, I’m actually feeling less tired than I did at the end of a Disney day!!

Love to all
Claire
Xoxox