Victoria, B.C.

Last weekend, I surprised Andrew by taking him to Victoria, B.C. for his birthday. The Ronald Reagan made port at Victoria in July of of 2010, but Andrew only had a couple hours to see and do things. He kept telling me "It's so nice up there, we have to go sometime." I was thinking, "Uhm, I'm not going to choose to go to Canada if we want to do an international trip!" There are so many more interesting places! Isn't Canada just like the U.S.? We took an Alaskan cruise about a month ago and it made port in Victoria. It also only gave us about 3 hours to go and tour the city. I was debating whether or not to even get off the boat with such a short port call........but I'm so glad I did. I fell in love with Victoria. I decided then that we would made the journey from Bremerton back up there for Andrew's birthday surprise.
It's only about 70 miles to Port Angeles, and from there we hop on the ferry, which takes us to the inner harbor in Victoria. Andrew couldn't get Friday off, so we had to make do with just one overnight stay. I chose the Executive House Hotel, which is directly behind the historical Fairmont Empress. It was gorgeous, and a perfect distance for walking to everything we planned on doing. This was our view!

We stopped off a the miniature exhibit and moved on to lunch on government st. Followed by a tour of the Parliament building. I know I might be a little clueless, but is anyone else aware that Canada is a colony of the UK? Blew my mind!

 Then we walked down Government St. checking out all the little shops and tea bars. We found this Christmas shop that blew our minds! It took us 30 minutes to go through the whole store and we didn't dawdle, we basically just strolled through. It was super adorable though =).

Next, we went back to the hotel to take a little nap. We were so tired! I woke up with a growling tummy and researched the best Italian place to eat in Victoria. It was called Il Terrazo Ristorante, and had been voted the best Italian restaurant in Victoria for the past 11 years. Our reservation was for 8:30, so we decided to drive out to Butchart Gardens to kill some time. It was absolutely gorgeous!

Although nature isn't on the top of my list for things to do, I actually enjoyed going to the gardens. However, I was very glad to move on to dinner =). It was so delicious! I ordered this pasta that had crab cakes with curry, coconut, cilantro, bacon, and a white pasta sauce over it. It was very rich, but amazing! Andrew got the chicken carbonara, and had no problem finishing his plate. =)

The next day we got up early and drove about 30 minutes north of Victoria, to Sooke. We started off the day with a little kayaking in the Sooke Basin. We saw quite of bit of marine life. As we were kayaking across the basin you could look into the water and see tons of jellyfish. We even reached out to touch them (they weren't the stinging type). We spotted some seals swimming around, who were curious of what we were up to. We also explored little coves and beaches that had scores of purple, pink, and orange starfish. We were able to pick them up and hold them too! We saw sunstars, salmon, and crabs as well. It was a 3 hour excursion and I'm so glad it was not a minute more. My arms were cramping and burning from all the work!

Next, we headed off to our ziplining adventure. There we ziplined over the "rainforests" of British Columbia, and even got to see a couple bald eagles and some proof that a bear had been by recently =). One of the ziplines was over 1,000ft long, and another we went as fast at 30mph. The views from the top of the mountains were absolutely gorgeous!

All in all, it was a wonderful trip. We had 42 hours and we packed in as much as we could. I'm not a huge fan of the Navy life, but it sure is nice to be able to travel around and see what the world has to offer =). 

This picture was taken on the ferry ride home. Want to take a guess at what time it is?

9:45pm << how awesome is that?