Victoria, BC: The Final Chapter of My Big Adventure

 

Welcome to the final installment of my travel posts. After Vancouver, I spent my final days in Canada on Vancouver Island, which was really nice and relaxing - a lovely way to end my mammoth holiday.

From Vancouver, @red_bella (Deb) invited me to spend the night at her place in Duncan, on Vancouver Island, en route to Victoria, about an hour south. Deb works in Victoria so was kind enough to give me a ride down there the next morning. But not before I met her fur babies!

Deb and her hubs have four huskies and they are rather gorgeous! While I was visiting I also had the pleasure of visiting Deb's lair... aka her sewing room. Home of the Pattinson Panties! (well, she's moved house since then, but you get the picture). It was really cool to see where Deb creates all her.. well, creations - panties, tshirts, mini-E clothes, you name it!

Deb in her sewing room (with her minis)

Next morning it was off to Victoria. Victoria is a lovely city and is the capital of British Colombia. I had two days there, relaxing, chilling out and general preparing to go home. As I've mentioned before, I was pretty tired at this stage of the trip so it was nice to have a few last days enjoying the sunshine before heading back to real life.

I stayed in a hotel on the inner harbour, which meant a lovely walk around this area each day. The grand building you see to the left is the parliament buildings. So pretty!

The flowers read 'Welcome to Victoria'. Awww.

Victoria has some grand buildings. I maintained my new 'tradition' of taking hop-on hop-off tour buses, and learned quite about the history of the city. One of their biggest attractions is whale watching, and whilst I didn't partake (I've whale-watched at home quite a few times) I did love this creative spot of topiary:

I also took advantage of the sunshine (I may have mentioned that) cos I was fairly sure I was gonna be going home to the end of winter. I'm really glad spring seems to have sprung back in kiwi-land, by the way.

After two days of lounging, eating great Mexican food, shopping even more than I had (Walmart, finally!), and gathering as many 'Canada' souvenirs as possible - and that is really saying something - it was time to head for home.

I had a four-hour bus & ferry combo journey to Vancouver Airport from Victoria. It was a nice opportunity to absorb as much of the amazing scenery as possible before I left.

And there she is. The big bird, tin can, whatever you wanna call it. A 747 that happened to have my name all over a free-upgrade Premium Economy seat... which was so nice, given the 13 hour 45 minute flight time.

And so I'm back home. In one piece. I have one more post about my travels up my sleeve, which is coming soon, real soon. Laters, baby x