THE DRIVE, FISH & CHIPS and FLOWERS 23,24/09/2017

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It was with some sadness when we loaded the car to depart from Tofino to Victoria. We'd had a great stay in the Duffin Coast Resort and certainly ticked most of the boxes on the wild life list. The wolves will have to wait for another time.

Having experienced the Pacific Rim Highway once already, Roger was more confident about tackling it. Lynda still found it necessary to close her eyes and grip her door handle on the more scary bits. We eventually come down from the mountains, pleased to say the weather was much better this time.If any of you ever come to Canada and fancy riding your motorbikes on a classic highway I think you'd enjoy this (Gordon Banks, Dawne Randall!)

With a couple of stops along the way the drive took about 5 hours and after navigating the city roads of Victoria we arrived at Abigail's Hotel. A real gem of place tucked away on a quiet street, but within walking distance of the city centre. A wonderful welcome and shown to our very nice room..
After getting settled in and a discussion with Sean on the reception we choose to eat at an outside Fish and Chip shop down on the Wharf. It's called RED FISH BLUE FISH (check out their website here. - Ed) and it's a converted (I think you mean upcycled! - Ed) container and serves some pretty good fish and chips along with such things as deep fried oysters,which Roger tried. Halibut and Salmon rather than cod on the menu!A nice stroll on the way back to the hotel took us along the harbour side which is a very vibrant area and we both enjoyed it very much.

A good nights sleep set us up for a drive to the Butchart Gardens (a rather unfortunate name but a nice website! - Ed) on Sunday morning. We must admit that although we left quite early the city roads were quite busy and we hadn't realised how many one way streets there were! Only one narrow escape and loads of car horns blaring saw us clear of the city and heading towards the gardens.We'll leave the pictures do the talking. Needless to say it's a stunning place and well worth the visit. Lynda took some pictures of flowers she is going to look for in the UK for our garden. This place is very popular with the thousands of Chinese tourists that visit Canada and they can become rather irritating with their habit of wanting to pose for every picture they take!

We returned to the city to return the car. We carried out an extensive recce on foot first and got it the route sorted. Needless to say the drop off was in the bowels of an underground car park.

Again on Sean's recommendation we went to a restaurant in China Town for our final Canadian meal. The place is called Don Mee (Looks yummy! Website here. - Ed) and the food was very good and well worth a visit. Make sure you're hungry as the portions are huge!

We are now sitting in the lounge waiting for a taxi to take us to the coach station for out final journey back to the mainland and our flight home.The last few pictures are of the journey home. It was a different ferry crossing this time and it goes very close to the USA boarder. The coach ride was good, sorry I can't say the same about the Air Canada flight back to Heathrow.

One final blog when we get home to round up what was one of the best holiday adventures we have ever had.

























































Location: Victoria, BC, Canada

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