Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Extra! Extra! Water shortage foils schemes!

Michael and I were thinking of taking a little trip with Raissa and Imtiaz this weekend. They're visiting from Seattle and Asia, respectively, and because we want them to move here we wanted to impress them with a glorious destination. First we were all, let's go to Hornby with Ananda so we can eat that awesome blueberry pie! But then we found out Ananda's working all weekend and Hornby isn't Hornby without Ananda. Then I was all, let's go to Tofino so we can eat at Sobo, one of my favorite restaurants in the world. But then I found out Tofino is making all restaurants and hotels shut down before Friday because of severe water shortages. What?! You heard me, the king of tourist towns is shutting down for the busiest weekend of the year. Check this out if you don't believe me. Now I don't know what to do with them. I was thinking of taking them to the Royal BC Museum at some point, but even though it's a wicked museum, I have a feeling it won't make them want to up and move here.

5 comments:

sarah said...

Here are my favourite things to do in Victoria:

Watertaxi cruise! I like taking them here in Van too, but Vic was my first cruise experience. If the watertaxi doesn't sell them on it, I don't know what will...

The wax museum! They have good candy there.

That fish and chips place that is actually on a floating dock... it is rather... festive. I like it. I think it is called Barb's.

That's all I can think of at the moment. OR... you could always whip over to Parksville if you feel like chillin' with the 80+ crowd.

Anonymous said...

You could check out the farms on Oldfield Road to see if anybody still has u-pick berries (blackberries?) or produce (tomatoes? kiwis?). I'm all about The Taste of Summer this year.

I have this problem with visitors to Victoria a lot. It's fun to live here, but it's not the liveliest place to *visit*. Maybe a daytrip to Botanical Beach or somewhere with big waves?

And that is really weird about Tofino.

Anonymous said...

I have so many ideas for you I don’t know where to start.
Great idea about the berries. There might be a corn maze too but it might be too early.
You could rent kayaks and take them up the Gorge or around the inner harbour. It’s actually quite cheep and you can get a tour guide if you want who can tell you neat, funny and scary stories about things that happened along the Gorge. Go to Ocean Island Kayakers beside Capital Iron.
East Sooke Park is my favourite place for a hike. You get great ocean, rainforest, and arbutus. There is also a really good chance of seeing Sea Lions and other sea mammals as you walk.
You could do a day trip to Sidney Spit or even an overnight.
You could go to Salt Spring for the Saturday market and have lunch at the Tree House place. And remember even though ferries are annoying to us they are fun for out of towners.
The classic wooden boat show will be on in the inner harbour and it’s free.
Barbs the fish and chip place at Fisherman’s Wharf (mentioned above) is cool and you can buy little fishes and feed them to the extremely overweight harbour seals. Again remember, seals may not seem that cool to you but depending on where these people are from they may be impressed.
The Salmon is really good this year and there has been lots of openings so it is quite cheep. Get sockeye steaks (from fisherman’s wharf if you go) and douce them in soy sauce, brown sugar and garlic, wrap them in foil and cook them at a very low temperature on the bbq or in the oven. Yummm.
You could go poke sea enenemies (sp?) at clover point and have one of those super yucky ice creams from Beacon Hill drive in.
The Butchart Gardens is way over priced ($25-30 I think) but on Saturday night they have fire works and they are really really good. There is a whole ground show and music and it goes on for a long time and you could look at the flowers too if your into it. If you go by car on Saturday there is usually a huge line up. But you can take the bus #75 and it goes right in and doesn’t take long.
I’ll stop now cauz this is getting really long and I don’t know what the protocol is for these things.
If you want more ideas email me…
P.S. you should warn people about the torture chamber at the wax museum cauz it’s not for everyone. Some people like it but I was really disturbed.

Erin Riley said...

holy, i didn't realize what this post would unleash! thanks for the suggestions! sarah m and emily, send an email if you wanna join in on the fun that we will surely get up to (sarah m, i think we will see you on thursday if you go out to bill's show...). you girls obviously love victoria. it's cute.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for all the good ideas, fellow blog readers. Victoria is beautiful. Not a lively place, but luckily that's not what I'm looking for. I'm perfectly happy just hanging out and relaxing (and having Michael and Erin take care of us, as perfect hosts do).