Day 5

Raining - supermarket - housework - washing - drying - ironing - cooking - planning for Rockies - no photos.

Day 4 - Sidney

This morning we set off to suss out the ferry at Sidney on which we will travel to Vancouver on the first stage of our drive across the Rockies. Then we went in to see Sidney.

This is me and Sidney. He was very quiet and would not tell me the name of his dog.

Jim found a friend of his own but he was positively unfriendly!

Unlike the above 2 citizens of the city of Sidney (small town!), everyone else was very friendly. We did a 5km round walk of the waterfront area and everyone we met said "Good Morning". Sidney is very nice and has some lovely shops and more book shops per capita than the rest of Canada earning it its title of Canada's Book Town.

                                                                                                      

To the left is a view of Sidney harbour. The last Sydney we were in had a bridge and an opera house!              

 In the afternoon we went in to Victoria again to visit the tourist office to get some advice on our trip through the Rockies. We now have a huge amount of literature to go through in order to finalise our itinerary. Our holiday is a little different to usual and, in fact, a little disconcerting as Jim is not wearing a hat. I have to keep reminding him that he is on holiday!

3rd Day - Pacific Marine Circle Route

We set off in glorious sunshine this morning to drive the Pacific Marine Circle Route which we had been informed would take 6 hours driving and obviously longer with stops. It wasn't long till it clouded over and became quite miserable and not conducive to the walking stops we had planned. We stopped at Port Renfrew for coffee in a place that could only be described as being in the middle of the wilderness. The journey cross country was in logging country so we saw lots of trees in various stages of growth, of felling, logging and being transported. We crossed innumerable creeks over single lane bridges and made our way to Duncan where we did a detour to Chemainus which is famous for its murals. Seemingly, when Chemainus hit a downturn, steps had to be taken to turn it from a logging village to a tourist attraction. Someone came up with the  bright idea of painting giant murals depicting scenes from the past. And it has worked! Tirau in New Zealand did a similar thing with corrugated iron sculptures in order to revitalise the town - you might remember the photos in the New Zealand blog.

This is a mural of the Hong Hing waterfront Store. Hong Hing ran a laundry and then a general store from 1915 to 1950.

 Telephone service became available in Chemainus in 1908. This Victorian residence served as the telephone for 30 telephones in the community.                                                                                  
                                                                                         

Steam Donkey At Work.

Based on the figures from the Native past and present in this area, 3 tribes are depicted.







We returned to Duncan and took out on foot to do the Totem walk. Duncan is famous for its totems. The oldest, original, still standing totem poles are found in the northern regions of Vancouver Island but, because of limitations of time and space, many tourists are unable to venture that far. The City of Duncan and the various artists who have carved the poles have provided a microcosm of the world of the Northwest Coast peoples.

The middle totem is a Kwakwaka'wakw carving by Oscar Matalpi. Oscar Matilpi is a carver who believes the material has its own spirit and spiritual power. The totem is Dzonoqua Wild Woman of the Woods. She is a cannibal giantess or ogress. She has bushy unkempt hair, half-closed eyes and a pursed mouth. She travels through the forest making the sound "Ooh Ooh" as she steals children and throws them into the basket on her back (which is supposedly made of snakes). At her house she makes them into her slaves. This is a good story to teach the dangers of going into the forest alone to little children. The coppers on her chest indicate her wealth.

This pole is a Kwakwaka'wakw carving by Richard Hunt - Cedarman holding a Talking Stick. It is the largest pole in diameter in the world. It is 200cms at the butt end , 39'6" high and weighs 7 tons. It was carved in the street in front of the public, took a year to carve and when finished put up with a special crane.

The journey home was uneventful and now Jim is calling for his dinner so I must obey!

Day 2 - hopping on and off in Victoria

When we got to Victoria this morning it was raining off and on but we thought we would brave the hop on hop off bus in order to get an overview of the city and to decide which sites/sights we wanted to spend time on. We were seated in the small covered front of the open top bus with the wind whistling in and stray cherry blossom settling momentarily on Jim's bald patch. By the time the full 90 minutes were up we were frozen to the core. After a brief hop off, for the driver to get a coffee, we hopped on again and 3 stops later hopped off at Spinnaker's Brewery Pub on the west bay for lunch and some hops for Jim in the form of Nutbrown beer. Seemingly there are a lot of micro breweries in Victoria but, thankfully, Jim has not found out where the others are or he would be seriously going to drink Canada dry! We had a lovely lunch in Spinnakers where a seat by the window where the sun was shining through helped to thaw us out after the freezing condition of the bus. We followed lunch with a walk on the westside walkway. There are lovely views from there and it would have been even better if it had been less cloudy when we would have been able to see the Olympic Mountains in washington State. as it was we got a very brief view of one snow-capped Olympic peak when the clouds shifted ever so slightly. We did, however, get a view of the floating houses of which we had seen only one yesterday. Yesterday's one was in a different wharf.

Floating village at Fisherman's wharf seen from West Bay.

We also saw an interesting sculpture made of driftwood:

Beside this was a throne for King and Queen Neptune, also made of driftwood. It was too awkwardly placed for us to get a photo though.

A heron in a tree on Westside walkway.

We hopped on again to hop off at St. Andrew's Cathedral. We quickly admired the stained glass windows but found little else to spend time on though maybe some prayers for good weather might not have gone amiss - ah well, lost opportunity! We did no more hopping but continued walking down to the wharf where we decided to go get a good look at the floating village at Fishermen's wharf. It was quite a walk but worth it to see the floating houses.

We had the added bonus of seeing 2 grey seals up close. They were obviously very tame and not in the least perturbed by people.

Lazily swimming.

Just lazy!

We have nothing to report from our return walk to the car or indeed from our return drive. The bus tour was well worth doing as we saw parts of the city that we would not have seen if we had been on foot all the time. We drove through Rockland which is known locally as nob hill because that is where the wealthy bankers live in beautiful mansions with beautiful gardens..We also learned a bit more than we would have without the tour. For instance we learned that Francis Rattenbury, an English immigrant of 25 won the contract to design the Parliament Buildings that Jim photographed yesterday. He also designed the splendid Empress Hotel which has seen Kings, Presidents and all sorts of other famous people stay there. That's probably where we would have stayed had we not already had an arrangement with Ted and Nancy!

There should be no trouble preparing dinner tonight as I have figured out the high tech cooker!

Day 1 part 2

It seems Ted and Nancy have settled in in Raphoe but are finding the weather quite wintry. They are very grateful (as are we!) to our good friends Evy and Geoffrey for going all the way to the airport in Belfast to collect them after they had missed their flight from Heathrow and had to take a later flight.
We have spent the afternoon in Victoria wandering about and trying to get a sense of the place. As you can see below, Jim's quest for Irish pubs throughout the world continues.

Ted's daughter, Erin, and her husband Kevin came to visit in the evening so we had all our queries dealt with except one. As I had not started to prepare dinner when they arrived, I did not realise that I had no idea how to use Nancy's state of the art electronic electric cooker. We pushed all possible buttons in all possible combinations to be greeted with varying bleeps and alarms and I had just completed my first f dance at the thought of starving overnight when I had a brainwave that finally solved the problem. That was immediately followed by the h dance!

The Irish Times Irish Pub

The building it is in is quite nice.

While we were admiring these totems at the entrance to a square, a young man came up to us and told us that his uncle had carved them. Then he just walked off!

This is a view of Government Buildings. It is quite imposing.

One of the floating houses in the wharf. There are supposed to be more but  we saw only one.

One of the beautiful spring flowerbeds at the wharf.

Today it is raining, probably to make us feel at home. Our plan was to take a hop on hop off bus in order to find out more about the city and discover which areas require a longer visit. No holiday is complete without some hopping on and off! Hopefully the rain will not hinder us.

29th April - Day 1 Canadian adventure

Front of house. Curiously the front door is at the side.

Here we are finally in the suburbs of Victoria after 24 hours in transit yesterday. All flights went smoothly with the odd bouts of turbulence. We negotiated all airports without too much stress and finally arrived in Victoria airport at 3.30am Irish time. We are 8 hours behind here so please be aware of that if anyone is texting as I leave my phone on at night. Jim enjoyed the views over Greenland with its mountain and glaciers. I was too busy watching The Muppets, The Help, We bought a Zoo and Mr. Popper's Penguins. I really enjoyed the penguins. The flight from Calgary to Victoria was spectacular for the first half as we flew over the Rockies in totally clear sky. Then the clouds arrived blotting out everything and causing quite a rocky descent - no pun intended! we were met at the airport by a friend of Nancy's, Lynn, and transported here. we lost little time getting to bed where Jim snored blissfully as I tossed and turned obviously past my sleep. Not to worry, there will be plenty time for sleep. We are all unpacked now in our new home and ready to set off exploring.

Decking at back. Jim behind the camera and Fionnuala at the door.

Preparations for new adventure

Jim and I are currently sorting the house out for 4 consecutive exchages with Canadian families. Our first exchange is in Victoria on Vancouver Island. While there we are taking a cruise up to Alaska and we hope to drive across the Rockies. The second exchange is in Grimsby between Toronto and Niagara Falls. Number 3 is in Ottawa and number 4 in Charlottetown, on Prince Edward Island. We are hoping that the experience will measure up to the last adventure when we were in Vietnam, Australis, Tasmania and New Zealand. I also hope that I will be able to upload photos from the beginning.

Day one in Canada - April 28th!