Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Weekend Trip to Victoria


This past weekend, I spent a good 24 hours in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, and just off the mainland in the ocean. To get there, me and a friend named joel, had to take the bus starting at 8:30 am to get to the ferry and eventually to get to downtown Victoria at 12:30pm. The ferry was really cool because you just sit out in the breezeway and watch the islands pass by (while everyone else stays inside, for some odd reason.

After we got to Victoria, we found ourselves around the 'touristy' area of town, with Parliament, a National Geographic IMAX museum, wax museum, and famous Empress Hotel all around us. We stopped by Parliament to be told tours were in a couple of hours (so check that off the list); we stopped by the museum to find that tix were $28, and the exhibits consisted mostly of natural history (which I find myself pretty well versed in, so check that off the list); wax people scare me, and thus check that one; and the hotel is pretty damn cool (check the pic below), but we looked like vagabonds (big backpacks), so walking in probably would have been an interesting experience.

We also ran into a street performer who was juggling flames and balancing an axe on his chin while some kid kicked him in the legs... yeah, kicked him in the legs (btw, what is the deal with street performers, they do cool stuff, but they try to make people laugh and its just awkward... I just begin to feel sorry for them. If you're going to do something odd, just do 'that' something odd and don't try to make me laugh... I leave it to comedians to do that). Also, I saw Darth Vader playing the violin (!)

ParliamentThe Empress Hotel

After walking the streets for a while and doing some window shopping, we visited Vancouver Island Brewery and Phillips Brewery. We got a tour at the former and learned quite a bit of info (4 ingredients to any beer are : water, barley, hops, and yeast, used in that order... also all beer fit under two types of beer, ales and lager, depending on whether the yeast bottom feeds or top feeds).... anyway, we had some interesting convos with some peeps there and got to see the assembly line.

After that, we did some more window shopping. Joel got some soap on his hands in an organic soap shop, and decided to rub them on some clothes on a street mannequin, only to be yelled at by the owner and a pedestrian. He walked briskly off.... I acted like I didn't know him and began to talk on my cell phone (I happen to think it worked out for me).


We then proceeded to Beacon Hill Park to play some football and check out the park/beach scene. We came across South Park School (seen above) and met some 'very interesting' people that you'll have to ask me about. Anyway, we concluded our night by going to a bar that had a volleyball court on top. We hung out with a bunch of different people, and were having a good time until Joel decided to throw a haymaker at the volleyball and knocked it over the large net onto the street.... in my opinion, Joel didn't have a good day with luck. We then spent the rest of the night at the bar and on the dance floor, all while having our massive backpacks nearby. Walking out at 2am of a pretty nice bar/club with those on must have garnered some remarks from some people, but they don't know me!

Morning After

PS Pictures were taken with no battery life, which was kinda hard to do

2 comments:

Heather W said...

Where did you sleep at 2AM Riley??

Will Revenue said...

I enjoyed "
[that disappeared somehow]" those were my favorite pictures.