For the first time this trip, we separate from LuSo. LuSo goes to Butchart Gardens and PaNa goes to Beacon Hill Park. LuSo walks to the Empress Hotel where there is a ticket booth to buy entrance tickets and bus tickets. The garden is 55 are, separated in several smaller gardens for example the Italian garden, a rose garden with more than 100 kind of roses … Butchart Gardens is beautiful to visit when it is nice weather, we had some rain but it has been taken care of. In the park there are free umbrellas at people’s disposal and when you do not need them anymore you just put them down. Today there was a problem with the busses. At the agreed time LuSo waited for the bus but it was overcrowded with people waiting for the bus. After a while LuSo gave up and took a taxi back to Victoria. The go back to the ticket booth to complain, there was also another couple with the same story. They were so nice to return part of their costs.

In the meantime PaNa went for a walk and see the shops. In Government Street they have a drink and a small bite at the Starbucks. In Broad Street they see a Robinson’s Outdoor Store. There Patrick asks for mosquito covers. They even have them covering the entire upper part of your body including your arms. As they const only 6 CAD and was we intend to go to Alaska one day (where they have mosquitos the whole year) we buy two of them. We walk back and get to Beacon Hill Park where we walk through the beautiful gardens and ponds. We even see some peacocks of which we take some pictures. At the end of the park we see a nice totem pole that is about 39m high. There we see the coast line of Victoria. Around 1.30pm we decide to follow this coastline, which at times is quite difficult. The road is covered with rocks, driftwood and dunes filled with an entire colony of bees. The bees make holes in the dunes to reach their nest. Nice but we decide to keep distance. At times we have to walk a very small path or even jump over a small gap between the rocks. Around 3pm we reach the end and arrive at Ogden Point where we walk up the pier to Ogden Point Lighthouse, which indicated the entrance of the harbor. There we see the boats of the Prince of Whales entering the harbor with again happy people on board. We walk back to the main land and arrive at Fishermans Wharf where there is an entire village with houseboats. It is very nice and picturesque. We have a talk with a couple. The woman shows us their dinner. They throw a cage in the water, which fills with huge crabs. We walk around the houseboats and see some for sale. We look at the price and are surprised. They go between 150.000 and 450.000 CAD for a houseboat! We walk the entire harbor channel until we are back at the harbor. About every minute there is a seaplane taking off with tourists who want to see Victoria from the plane. At the harbor we see a waffle booth, more specifically “Real Belgian Waffles”. We walk back to the center to buy a nice T-shirt with the Canadian flag on it. Around 6pm we are back at the hotel, take a shower and meet with LuSo and around 8pm we have again dinner at the Milestone Grill & Bar. After dinner LuSo goes back to the hotel and we go for a walk. Then we meet the owner of the waffle booth who starts talking with us as he hears us speaking Dutch and he is also from Belgium.  He tells us how he came to Canada and started his business here. Then we continue our walk and talk about the most beautiful city of our trip and fantasize about how we would love to spend our old day here… we both lost our hearts in Victoria! Maybe we should also bake some waffles here…