Vancouver Trip 2010 part 4 - Vancouver Island (2)

Second day on the island, we took another ferry out to Salt Spring Island to check out the Saturday Market, which was rather "hippie" I would say, with handmade products, local produce, buskers and a laze on the lawn, eating bagels and cheese bought from the market. Carefree.

Well, the day wasn't getting younger and we needed to head for the ferry, while stopping by some places for quick peeks. We stopped at a rather "homely" vineyard and also a goat cheese farm.

Back on Vancouver Island, dinner was at a brew pub called Spinnakers near our B&B where they brewed their own ale. I ordered a beef pot pie and tried an ale. I must say I'm really not one for beers. Wine and cocktails are more my cup of tea in the alcohol department.

We woke up the next day to a nice home-cooked breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup (finally!) and sausages. Yum! We asked for a lighter breakfast as we were taking a (dinghy) boat to go whale-watching. We had to have some restraint though with such a nice breakfast, but we took some seasickness pills just in case. We had the dinghy (Orca Spirit) all to ourselves. Dressed in bulky life suits (not vests only), we experienced a bumpy ride out to sea as we searched for whales. However, the resident whales were away, so no whales for us. :( But we did spot some bachelor sea lions. The guide was telling us that these were the sea lions who lost out during mating season and had to be stuck here, alone, trying to build up "scars", while the winner had a harem elsewhere.

The 3-hour ride resulted in me having a backache the next day, which thankfully was gone by the following day.

We were pretty hungry after the "hunt" and headed to this place (again read about by my friend) called Pagliacci's in downtown Victoria. The starters were bagels with cream cheese which we devoured. It's interesting that the bagels in Vancouver that I tried were softer than the usual American kind, which made it all the more appealing. I had the nice and warm Sunday in the Park with George pasta which is like the pasta special for the day. They served in half and full sizes, leaving me some room for dessert (as I ordered the half-size), which was a decadent "Chocolate Oblivion", shared of course.

We decided to have a more leisurely afternoon (which we seem to be having each day already) and popped by the Craigdarroch Castle, which to be honest, looked more like someone's home built to look like a castle, rather than a 'real' castle. I think it serves as a hotel. It had a nice lawn though, with lots of daisies.

We followed this with a visit to Anne Hathaway's Cottage, which we discovered was actually just next door to our B&B! Ha! After we've been trying to find out which part of the street it was on. No, it's not the actress, but actually with reference to the wife of Shakespeare. The original is in Shottery, Warwickshire, England, which was badly damaged in a fire. So this cottage in Victoria is supposedly the oldest.

After that, we decided we should have a simple dinner of cup noodles so we headed out to the grocer's. A supposedly 5-minute ride became a 20-minute ride as we searched for the supposed address of the "nearby grocer". Ha! In the end, we managed to "accidentally" find the grocery and got our cup noodles dinner.