The Duncan Road Trip with Katrina

Today, Katrina finally went with me on the road trip she had been talking about for months. She actually didn't really want to go today, as she had been hoping for a nice sunny day. Since my time here was running out, there wasn't really any other option apart from not doing it. Katrina was sceptical when I told her that the rain was supposed to stop around noon and that it would still be a nice afternoon - once again I turned out to be right about the weather.
We left around 11:30 AM. The first stop was the gas station, where Katrina filled the tank up. However, as she got her shoes wet in a puddle, she decided to turn around and put on some more water resistent shoes. When we left the house for the second time, we also took Jakki along.

Our first real stop was a viewpoint. It had just stopped raining when we got out of the car. Nevertheless, we couldn't really see anything at first, everything seemed really foggy all around us. I still tried to see it in a positive light: The fog made the valley below seem really mysterious. After standing at the viewpoint for a few minutes, the fog suddenly lifted and offered us a really amazing view of the sea and the mountains surrounding it. Thus we had in fact picked the perfect moment to stand there as the change in the scenery was unbelievable - within seconds, it changed from a white bulk of nothingness into an amazing picture.
Next, we stopped at Cowichan Bay, a little village right at the sea. There were a lot of little, cozy shops right at the harbour. We stopped at a bakery and Katrina got us some pretzels with cheese. I liked those pretzels espescially since they didn't really taste like typically German pretzels. As I didn't really know what it was and thought that I had never tasted it before, she also got us some shortbread cookies to try.

We kept driving North to Chemainus, the city of murals. On the way there, we actually saw a rainbow.
There were a lot of very nice murals on the walls of all the shops and official buildings in Chemainus. We walked a bit through the little town in order to get a look at the art. The city also had a lot of things reminding me of fairytales, for example a 'Hansel and Gretel' candy store. Katrina got several interesting types of fudge for us, which were really tasty, too. During our walk, we saw some people that were dressed up for Halloween. One guy in some kind of skull costume really caught our attention. After we had seen most of the city, we went back to the car and drove back South to Duncan.

Duncan was mostly famous for its totem poles and we really saw a lot of them here. There was one totem pole which had some parts made of abalone shell and that looked really nice in my opinion.
After our walk through Duncan, Katrina was hungry and we were thinking about where to buy some food. We tried a few places on the road out of Duncan, but they were either closed or their menu didn't appeal to us. Katrina actually got a bit frustrated around this time, which turned her into some kind of angry driver. I actually hadn't expected this so I felt like the situation was funny. We ended up stopping at a farmer's market, which also annoyed Katrina since she wouldn't be able to keep driving directly back home from there due to the lay-out of the road. However, she hadn't seen that problem before turning into the farmer's market's parking lot which is why she was annoyed about that. After we had had a tuna sandwich from the market, her mood lifted again.

On the way back, I proposed going to Shawnigan Lake. Katrina had mentioned th lake before and said that she would like to go there with Jakki. As it was already 5 PM, Katrina didn't really feel like going there anymore on our trip. I tried to change her mind by saying that it would be fun for Jakki and that otherwise, Jakki would be sad about not really going on a walk in nature. In truth, I just really wanted to see the lake and Katrina saw through my intentions. We still went to the lake.
Shawnigan Lake was really beautiful. It was surrounded by mountains and just when we got there, the sun started to set behind some of the mountains, which looked amazing. While we were there, it was raining a little bit from above, which was really weird as there were no clouds above us. The rain didn't bother us, though.

On the way home, Katrina also stopped at 'Thrifty Foods' in order to get some coffee and chips. I saw a box of 'Nanaimo bars'. I had never had any but I felt like they were a very typical Canadian candy. When I asked Katrina about what they tasted like, she encouraged me to buy the box. Even though I had already had too much sweet stuff today, I tasted a piece of the Nanaimo bars. It tasted like chocolate, coconut and butter cream.
We got home around 6:45 PM and then spent the evening watching 'Suits'.

Petting dogs and singing karaoke

I really enjoyed playing and petting Jakki and Small Cat this morning. I was actually surprised that Jakki let me pet her so much as she would usually run away from me petting her.
Around noon I decided that I had to take advantage of the good weather. Thus, I took a bus Downtown and walked to Beacon Hill Park from there. There were unbelievably many ducks in the park today - I think I had never seen so many ducks in one place! There were also still some flowers blooming, which I hadn't expected at this time of year.
I kept walking South to Dallas road, where I sat down on a bench to watch the ocean for a while. While I was sitting there, several dogs, which were walking past, stopped and let me pet them which was nice. After a while, I decided to go down to the water. Since I hadn't gone in that direction yet, I tried climbing on the rocks from one little rocky beach to the next. It was quite fun but unfortunately, there were a few muddy and slippery passages. One time, while I was walking on an especially narrow and muddy path, I slipped and got my clothes and my handbag quite muddy. I also hurt my leg a little bit, but the pain only lasted for a few minutes. After that, I was actually glad when I arrived at some stairs where I could get back up to the road even though I had really enjoyed being so close to the ocean.

I took the next bus home where I decied to wash my muddy clothes. While they were in the washing machine, I walked with Small Cat around the garden. Afterwards, I took a shower and relaxed a little.

In the evening I went up Shelbourne Street to meet with Amy in order to sing karaoke. She hadreserved a little karaoke room for the two of us for two hours. We mostly sang english songs, although Amy didn't really know too many of them. She was more comfortable singing chinese songs. The whole thing was still pretty fun, although I was a bit shocked when I found out about the price afterwards - it was a lot more expensive than I had expected.

Ogden Point and relaxing

This morning, I decided to tidy up my room a little bit in order to prepare for packing soon.

Even though I had just been there three days ago, I went to Ogden Point again around noon. I just loved walking on that path into the ocean and enjoying the smell of the sea around me.

Afterwards, I bought some bread from the bakery and groceries from save-on-foods.
As I was pretty exhausted this afternoon from going on so many trips during the last few days, I just relaxed in front of the tv.

A rainy day in Stanley Park

As I already had to check out of the Samesun this morning, I got up at 8 AM in order to have enough time to eat breakfast, take a shower, and check out. Afte checking out around 11 AM, Iris and I decided to go for a walk in Stanley Park.
The walk to Stanley Park was already quite long and it was raining the whole time. I wanted to buy an umbrella since I had lost mine a few days ago. However, I was a little picky: I wanted a cheap umbrella which looked interesting and was transparent if possible. After checking out about five stores, I found exactly what I had been looking for.
Even though it was raining almost non stop while we were there, we really enjoyed the walk through the park. We started by walking around the 'Lost Lagoon' and then we went to see the totem poles as well as a native killer whale statue.We also saw a film crew somewhere in the park but we couldn't make out what they were preparing to film. Due to the weather, we also didn't want to stay and find out about that.
On the way back Downtown, we made a detour to 'English Bay Beach' in order to see the 'Inukshuk' there.

We arrived back at the hostel around 3 PM. Iris was pretty wet by now and I hadn't really stayed dry either even though I had used my new umbrella. I decided to try and take the 5 PM ferry and so I said 'Goodbye' to Iris and quickly went to catch the next skytrain.
During the ferry ride to Victoria, there were some humpback whales close to the ferry. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see them since it took me too long to go outside.
I arrived back home around 8 PM. It wasn't raining in Victoria which reinforced my belief that there was no really bad weather in Victoria.
After cooking some rice for dinner, I decided to finally try the bath salt which Xue had given me months ago by taking a bath. The bath salt ball made the water look quite colourfull while it dissipated and afterwards, the water sparkled, which looked really interesting.

Walking through Downtown Vancouver

This morning Iris and I took the ferry to Vancouver. As we wanted to take the 11 AM ferry, we had to get up pretty early, which was a bit annoying. While arriving at the Tsawwassen ferry terminal, we played 'Pokemon Go' and managed to catch a lot of pokemon in that terminal before taking the bus to Downtown Vancouver.
We arrived around 2 PM at the hostel and after locking our stuff in our room, we started walking through Downtown Vancouver. At first we walked towards the harbour area and Gastown. Next, we walked through Chinatown. Finally, we walked back to Downtown.
By now, we were really hungry and thus, we had dinner at the little Sushi restaurant I had been to a few times already. I had salmon and cucumber maki as well as unagi rolls, which were really good.
Afterwards, Iris tried to get in touch with her bank as she had some trouble with her credit card. She didn't really have any success, though, so we decided to go on another small walk instead. We crossed the bridge to Gastown halfway in order to take a few night pictures of Vancouver - it was already dark now and the skyscrapers with all the lights in the windows looked pretty cool.

Marvelling at the beautiful sky

This morning, Katrina offered to join Iris and me on a hike up Mount Doug with the two dogs. Since I had gotten lost a few times while hiking around Mount Doug, I happily accepted her offer. On the way to Mount Doug, I was sharing the backseat with Jasper. However, I was apparently sitting in Jasper's spot and he didn't want to sit anywhere else so I pretty much had a 70 pound dog sit more or less on me during the whole ride.
With Katrina guiding us, we hiked up and down Mount Doug in barely more than an hour. The paths we took were quite challenging, though, as they sometimes got a little steeper. It was still very fun and a good workout.
Afterwards, Katrina also showed Cordova Bay to us, which was just North of Mount Doug. She then dropped us off in Downtown Victoria.
As it was lunchtime, Iris and I finally went to Red Fish Blue Fish in order to have some fish and chips. Iris said that this was the first good food she had had since coming here.
After we were done eating, we took a bus to Ogden Point. It was raining a bit when we arrived there but the rain stopped while we were walking along the long path to the small lighthouse. The sky looked just spectacular with all the different kinds of clouds and the sun breaking through.
We also walked to Fisherman's Wharf in order to see some seals and to check out the floating homes. Finally, we walked back downtown along the harbour area and were rewarded with some more amazing views of the sky.

On the way to the hostel, I also had a huge scoop of maple icecream. After dropping Iris off at the hostel, I bought some milk and then took the next bus home. At home, I took a shower, started packing for our trip to Vancouver and watched some 'Suits' with Katrina.

Ballet Rocks

As I was extremely exhausted from our hike yesterday, I slept in today.
Iris and I decided to go to the ballet at 2 PM. There was a 'Ballet Rocks & Vivaldi's Four Seasons' performance at the McPherson playhouse. The theatre was a lot smaller than we had expected but it looked really cute. We were sitting in the left corner of the first row, which wasn't too bad but we couldn't really see what was happening in the left rear corner of the stage. The first half of the ballet was a very modern kind of ballet danced to rock music. I especially enjoyed the ballet performances to the songs 'Comfortably Numb' and 'Sound of Silence'. The second half of the ballet was a lot more traditional. It was my first classical ballet. My favourite season of the four seasons was definitely winter. The spring song got stuck in my head for a while as I was already familiar with parts of it. All things considered, I prefered the modern ballet to the classical ballet though.

After the ballet, Iris and I took the bus to where I lived and from there, we walked to Willow's Beach. The walk to the beach was about 2 km long but it was quite interesting as there were many typically suburban houses which looked really nice. We sat at the beach for a few minutes before walking on. Iris tried to clean her shoes with the water of the ocean which resulted in her getting wet feet. We kept walking North to Cattle Point and after that to Uplands Park. Even though it was just a short walk there were some stairs we had to climb, which wasn't really fun as we were still exhausted and especially Iris suffered from sore muscles because of our hike yesterday.

Next we took a bus to get Downtown, hoping to eat dinner at Red Fish Blue Fish. As it turned out, that store was only open during lunch hours. It was just past 6 PM and I thought that the fish store at Fisherman's Wharf might still be open. Thus we took a bus to check it out. Unfortunately, Barb's Fish and Chips had closed at dusk, so we had just missed our chance here, too.
We took the next best bus back to the hostel, were we had dinner. I had a potato and Iris had a salad and then later a potato as well.
We spent most of the evening playing some games which we had found at the hostel. We started with 'Dame', although we were soon told that the english name for that game would be 'Checkers'. Afterwards, I showed Iris how to play 'Chinese Checkers' - a game which I had learned to play here a few months ago. I won both games and Iris decided that she didn't want to play any games against a mathematician anymore. Nevertheless, we still played some 'TicTacToe'.