Victoria Canada

My friend Karen and I took a trip up to Victoria Canada to celebrate her birthday. It started off with me driving up to Seattle Friday afternoon. Judene and I met up at the Lynnwood Mall and got caught in a snow storm. Long story but the snow only hit that one area - 10 miles away it was totally dry. Crazy!! Judene and I did some shopping, then we walked across the street in the blizzard, both of us were covered in snow, to MacGrath's and had a nice WARM dinner. After dinner, we headed back out into the snow storm and walked to the movie theatre and saw the Al Paccino movie - "88 Minutes". It was good. We really had a nice time!! I drove over to Karen's after the movie.

Saturday morning - Karen and I caught the 7:30 am high speed catamaran, The Victoria Clipper, out of Seattle up to Victoria. It was really cool...only took just over 2 hours to cover 180 miles. First thing on the agenda was to check into our hotel called Hotel Grand Pacific. We were on the 8th floor and had an amazing view of the harbor. One of the tour guides said it was their only 5 star hotel on the island. It was really nice. Once we checked in we set out to do our sight seeing and shopping. Weather was cold but clear, both of us were bundled up pretty good. Victoria is a beautiful place - the Legislator, the Empress Hotel - so much to see. We had lunch at a pub on the water front - the fish and chips were great. We walked around until amost 8 pm and called it a night.

Sunday - we took the tour bus to the Buchart Gardens. It was breath taking!! I have never seen anything like it and not all of the flowers had bloomed. I cannot even imagine what it looks like in full bloom. We walked around for a couple of hours and then took the tour bus back to town and grabbed some lunch. Then it was off to do some more shopping before we caught the Clipper back to Seattle at 5 pm. What a great trip!!! Would highly recommend visiting Victoria if you have not been there before.