Thanksgiving in Victoria - Part 3

The second thing I wanted to do in Victoria was go to Butchart Gardens, which some of us did on Wednesday afternoon. It was cool and cloudy, and had been raining, but thankfully, did not rain whilst we were exploring. Even though it was gloomy, and there were no roses, there was a lot of colour. Lots of things were still green, lots of stuff still had the vibrant fall colours.

The Gardens were in the process of being decorated for Christmas, with a Twelve Days of Christmas theme. Most of it was done, but there was no partridge in the pear tree, the turtledoves' cage was empty, and the 9 ladies weren't dancing yet. I think Katy managed to get pictures of everything that was already set up. Tod and I took a lot of garden pictures, too.


Tod tended to take a lot of landscape photos...


...while I tried to be artistic.

We spent a good 2 hours wandering around, and eventually all of us ended up in the coffee shop having hot chocolate or coffee. Luckily, it didn't start to rain until then.

Thanksgiving in Victoria, Part 2

Day 2 in Victoria was something I'd been anticipating for weeks: Tea at the Empress Hotel. The Empress was one of the old CP Hotels (the chain is now mostly owned by Fairmont), and they still do High Tea every afternoon. It was wonderful, once we found everybody.


A rain-soaked Empress Hotel - that's me in the red jacket, and Katy in black

We got to the hotel with nearly an hour to spare. It was raining outside, so Maureen said she'd stay inside the hotel with Mom. Tod, Katy, Dad and I went to check out the shops on Government St. We found Munro's Books, and browsed there for a while. Tod and Katy went to A & B Sound to get the new GBS cd, and Dad and I elected to stay in the bookstore. I found a book that was co-written by Kay Stewart, my English prof during my first year of university.

Suddenly, I realized that it was getting close to 2 p.m., and we headed back to the Empress. When we got there, Maureen and Mom were nowhere to be found. We learned that Meg and Carole were joining us, but we had no idea where they were. I talked to a woman in the shop next to where we'd left Maureen and Mom, and she said they'd chatted for quite a while, but had headed for the restaurant to "meet some people for tea". I wandered around and checked all the shops, but they were nowhere to be found.

Megan and Carole appeared, having just made a detour to the ladies' room. We decided we might as well sit at our table and wait, since at least Maureen and Mom knew where we were, though Dad kept offering to go look for them.

They finally showed up, and we had a delightful tea, with cucumber sandwiches, and scones, and shortbread (among other delights). Oh, and absolutely wonderful tea.

American Thanksgiving in Canada

Well, it's come and gone. Katy, Tod and I flew to Victoria by way of Seattle last Monday, having to leave the house very early to catch our 8 a.m. flight. Finally arrived in Sidney (where the Victoria airport actually is) early afternoon, and drove to the house, which was only about 15 minutes away.
The house was huge! It had 6 bedrooms, though only 3 baths, a huge kitchen, dining room, living room with fireplace, and a sunroom. It also had a pool and a spa, though it was a little chilly to use either of those. (It was about 46 F when we arrived, and never really got too much warmer than that. Oh, and it rained every day.)


This is the house from the backyard


Bonnie, Monica, Tom, Megan, Carole, Bruce and Marnie had already arrived.
Once we got settled in, we decided to go to the market. We went to Thrifty Foods, which is Vancouver Island-based. It's a pretty cool store. They have a deli with fresh meats and cheeses, a huge bakery, a natural foods section, and a pretty impressive produce section. My purpose in tagging along on this expedition was to get Nanaimo bars and tea. None of the Americans had ever heard of Nanaimo bars, and none of them really tea drinkers, either. I picked up two packages of 1/2 dozen bars, and once we got home, they disappeared pretty quickly. (The next day, Bruce went back to the market and picked up about 6 more packages.)

Bruce made spaghetti for dinner. After we ate and cleaned up, and checked our email, I went to bed. It was only about 9:30, but I'd been up since 4 and I was tired.

To be continued....

Just finished reading....

Kidnapped by Jan Burke.

Every time I read Jan Burke's latest book, I think it's her best. I thought Hocus was the best. I thought Bloodlines was her best. But I'm pretty sure that Kidnapped is really her best.
This is another Irene Kelly/Frank Harriman novel.

Members of the Fletcher family, a large, unusual SoCal clan, are being killed. One of Irene's former colleagues married into the family, though that is not the only reason Irene's investigative senses are tingling. She's just done a feature on children kidnapped by their non-custodial parents. One of the Fletcher kids disappeared five years previously at the time of her father's murder, and Irene is pretty sure she was kidnapped by her mother.

Reading about Irene and Frank is like visiting old friends. Exciting, yet comfortable, though certainly not boring.

How time flies!

Wow! I hadn't realized that it's been over 3 weeks since my last post. Don't know what I've been doing....just frittering my time away, I guess.

I finished a few memorable books, which for some reason I didn't review: Julia Spencer-Fleming's All Mortal Flesh and Sarah Stewart Taylor's Still as Death. Love both those authors, their protagonists and their titles.

During a slow moment in telephone reference, I picked up Maggie Sefton's knitting mystery Knit One, Kill Two , and enjoyed it so much that rather than reading Jan Burke's latest, Kidnapped, I picked up Needled to Death, the second in Sefton's series. I do mean to read Kidnapped, but since I needed a paperback for my trip to the doctor this morning, I picked up Deadly Greetings: A card-making mystery by Elizabeth Bright. Greeting cards are not really my thing, I'm more of a knitter and scrapbooker, but it's a quick, distracting read.

One thing the knitting stories did was make me get back into knitting. Yesterday, I went to Jo-Ann's and picked up a bunch of "eyelash" yarn, to make scarves with. They're really fast, easy projects (I finshed almost half of one last night!), and I hope to do at least a couple for Christmas gifts.

Planning for a Thanksgiving trip to Victoria with the family. Bonnie has rented a huge house, and I think there'll be around 13 of us there, including my parents and sister, who will be coming down here in the spring. Christmas will be a lot less stressful for me this year if I only have one houseguest (father-in-law).

Can't end without a new flower pic. This is one of my unidentified miniatures.