Weekend Trip to Victoria BC Canada for Our Third Anniversary

Butchart Gardens

To celebrate our three years of marriage together, we took a weekend trip to Victoria BC Canada via the Victoria Clipper ferry.

Leaving on the Victoria Clipper ferry

Welcome to Victoria BC Canada

We started our adventure in Victoria with a city tour bus ride to the Butchart gardens. We were both pleasantly surprised by how much we enjoyed the tour aspect of the drive where we learned about this history of Victoria.

We learned that Butchart gardens used to be a limestone quarry and that the owners of the quarry, the Butchart family, decided to transform it into a garden after the limestone was depleted. Jennie Butchart herself actually planted a lot of the ivy found alongside the once quarry walls.

Saturday evening we ate at Pagliacci’s restaurant. We got there just before a few large parties and were seated right away. The food was delicious. After dinner we had planned to do the Ghost Tour, but due to the heavy rain we decided to see the new Jungle Book movie instead. It was really fun watching a remake of a film we enjoyed watching as children.

We walked alongside the Inner Harbour on our way back to our hotel.

The British Columbia Parliament Building 

The British Columbia Parliament Building at night 

Sunday morning we ate the Blue Fox Café. We learned again that it is beneficial to be in a party of two because if you are then you can be seated before the larger parties.

We also visited the Royal BC Museum. The first part of the museum talked about ancient animals. Mr. D and I both got to hold a small remnant of a mammoth tusk, and we were both surprised by how heavy the remnant was (each full tusk weighs about 300 pounds).

The second part of the museum touched on the aboriginal tribes who lived in Canada and are often remembered for their ornate, carved totem poles. Two years ago we went to Vancouver BC Canada for our first anniversary where we visited Museum of Anthropology and I first saw some of these totem poles. We both preferred the museum in Vancouver better because we felt it highlighted the achievements of the aboriginal tribes better and did not feel as, well, for lack of better words, as sad.

These totem poles were enormous! This is actually one pole cut in half.

After visiting the museum, we strolled around Beacon Hill Park. We saw several Canadians outside walking their dogs, and Mr. D was pretty jealous we do not have a dog. According to our phones, we did a lot of walking and got around 23,000 steps each. We also saw a few peacocks by the park.

He lost his friend

Mr. D and I enjoyed celebrating our anniversary with a weekend in Victoria. We got to reflect on the last three years, and talk about the bright future we see for ourselves together. Where should we go on our next anniversary?

-Mr. D and Mrs. M

We borrowed our friend's mirrorless camera, so hopefully the quality of our photos are better than those we normally take with our phones.

Planning our trip on board the ferry

Although these are called English Daises, we made up the name "Formica-Violeta" for them

We visited a pretty cool toy shop. These reminded Mr. D of the toys his grandparents used to have.

Mr. D was pretty excited about the Ninja turtles we found