My ipad travel blog: May 2015

I always enjoy a trip to Victoria. It's a lovely place to visit and I have good friends who live there.

Getting the 9:00 ferry is a bit of a nightmare due to morning rush hour and there being only one lane in the tunnel going south. Therefore, I thought that I would catch the 11 o'clock ferry and since it was mid week and not yet summer, I thought getting there at 10:30 would be early enough.

I was wrong!

I had to wait for the one o'clock ferry.

Eventually I was on my way. I retreated into the Sky Lounge.

But you can see the weather improved as we set sail.

Lots of pictures were being snapped by the many tourists as we sailed through the Gulf Islands.

Here's a map to give you an idea of the journey. I had been ferry riding a couple of weeks earlier when a friend and I went to Salt Spring Island, stopping at Mayne, Galiano, and Pender along the way. This time we sailed non stop to Schwartz Bay.

Eventually I did arrive and half an hour later I was at my friend's Margrit's in James Bay in Victoria

That night we met another friend, Nansi, at a favourite restaurant of mine, Spinnaker's, and you can see why-check out the view!

We had coffee at Nansi's and here you can see some of the chairs she has collected through a charity event where artists paint chairs. Rather nifty!

The next morning I was off to see my old friend, Hilary (I mean I have known here for more than 40 years). Hilary lives in a houseboat and this is the view when I was waiting for her.

Then we went for a walk along the ocean in Esquimault. Esquimault is a suburb of Victoria where the naval base is located.

I will just let you come along on our walk.

It was just a beautiful day as you can see!

Cruise ship season has begun!

This was a type of flower I don't remember seeing before!

Can you see the deer below? Deer are a bit of problem for Victoria gardeners.

This house is on naval property so we wondered who gets to live here!

Make room for goslings!!!

Here we are at Hilary's houseboat!

After coffee I headed back to Margrit's and she and I were off to Sooke. Below you can see the famous Mom's Cafe.

Our next stop was East Sooke Regional Park, one of my favourite places anywhere, and I hadn't been here for several years.

Look at the mist there!

It's a bit of a scramble on the path and we noticed we were a little more reluctant to climb all over rocks than when we were younger.

Here you can see a native plant, salal, and yes the berries are edible when ripe!

Magic mossy trees...

Now how is this for a view-and you can see what we mean by rocks.

There are petroglyphs here but this is where we decided to forgo the climb down to see them.

Check out the moth camouflaging!

And you never know where you find a flower

And I think this is my favourite picture below...

It was getting to be late afternoon so time to head back to town!

The next morning I walked a block from Margrit's down to Ogden Point where there is a cute cafe.

There I met one of the members of our Facebook Photography group, A Day in the Life of the Earth, for the first time. As always seems to be the case, we had a great time!

Victoria is famous for its beautiful flowers

and my friend, Margrit, should be for her strawberries!

After I got back "home" I set off for a walk to the provincial museum to see a display on gold.

It's a beautiful walk there through the lovely streets of James Bay.

Here you can see the back of our provincial legislature buildings.

And inside the museum now you can see one display in the gold exhibit. The exhibit traces gold back to the South America where the Spanish coveted it and gives the history of the various gold rushes that brought many thousands of miles in pursuit of wealth.

After touring the exhibit I decided to head downtown to check out a few of my favourite places. One is Munro's Books where they had a display of books all to do with walking!