Saturday June 20th

4:50pm

This morning we bade farewell to Harvey House as we ventured off to Victoria. I had filled my new travel mug with their delicious (Carnation) Hot Chocolate....I had put some into a Ziploc bag so I could have it over the next few days. I was hoping to get some in England.

The journey to Victoria wasn’t very exciting, and didn’t seem to take quite as long as I thought. So we stopped off at Cathedral Grove and walked a couple of short trails there. It was all flat, and was named so because of the HUGE Douglas Firs towering over everything. We took each other’s photos next to the biggest tree in the forest. We had lunch in Nanaimo at Tim Hortons where I had the same things as before, only this time I had a “Strawberry Bloom” donut which was very nice, and I had a decaff coffee again, which was MUCH better this time – I asked for cream and 2 sugars and it was just right.

Still not as good as Starbucks though...!!!

We continued on to Victoria and we stopped off at Duncan to visit the Cultural Centre – only to find that they were open for half an hour and they were closing at 3pm. On a Saturday! We decided to pay the fee and go inside, chose to skip the movie and use the time admiring the totem poles. It was a shame the place closed early, as I think we would have stayed longer here. A guided tour around the poles would have been interesting. Still, we left and continued on to Cottage Pirouette.

When we arrived at Cottage Pirouette, it didn’t look quite how I thought it would from the outside. It looked a little run down, but not too bad I guess. Our host greeted us and showed us around, made us a pot of tea and gave us cookies. She seemed pleasant enough but quite passive to be honest, as though she had something else on her mind. Still, she took us to our room, which, because a family had booked in (and sharing one bathroom), was not the original room we booked. When she left us to it, I decided to go peek into the other rooms which were still vacant. The Daffodil Room (the one we originally booked ) was SO much nicer. We ended up with the Camelia Room which was spacious yes, but very drab and dull in decor, especially compared with the other two. Their decor was bright and happy, showing house beams and quirky shapes. Our room was pretty square, beams covered and painted a plain, dull colour.

Our room was actually similar to the rest of the house, or what we had seen. It looked like it had been given a base coat of paint and that decorating had not been finished. Walls were bare and sterile. Add dark wood furniture to the mix and it was....quite depressing to be honest. Dark wood with dark decor....not a good match if you ask me, especially with small windows! Worse with bare walls. Its strange how your surroundings can change your mood, isn’t it? Sadly I felt disappointed somewhat, and even if I enjoyed breakfast in the morning, I don’t think I would probably recommend Cottage Pirouette at all.

As a consequence, I barely unpacked, getting out my journal to rant about the day, and daydreamed about staying in a nicer place which most likely would NOT have such a weird musty, old, hasn’t-been-lived-in-for-a-while sort of smell. I lay on the bed waiting to feel hungry so we could leave the place and come back fairly late, but I had to wait for Mathew of course as he had been driving all day.

Eventually we got round to it and it turned out that Victoria was a really nice town. We had dinner in Ric’s Grill, which was very nice indeed. I was looking forward to tomorrow and our visit to the Museum.