Vancouver Island Adventure – Part 1

Hello All! I have returned from my trip out west and plan on getting back to my regular blogging schedule and healthy recipe creations but first I thought I’d share some photos and tales of my recent trip to Vancouver Island.

Some may not know that I was born and raised in beautiful Victoria, BC. I moved out to Ontario on a whim, fell in love and consequently made my permanent home in Burlington, which is equally as quaint and lovely. Typically, I visit my hometown once a year to see family and friends and to breathe in all the ocean air I can:)

My sister works as an esthetician, so the first course of business was a pedicure. There is nothing like getting off a plane, being whisked away to a relaxing spa and having all the travel sloughed off of you. After the pedi, we grabbed coffees and let my toes dry at Saxe Point, which locals know as a non touristy area with park benches, pretty gardens and of course, sprawling ocean views.

Then we headed off to my brother’s where we relived our childhood by breaking out the Rummoli board.

We played countless games on this exact board when we were kids. My brother has kept it perfectly preserved for all these years down to the old mandarin orange box that housed the poker chips.

It was such a fun time! I lost badly and my brother was not accepting my ‘new’ rule that the one with the least amount of chips wins;)

All the game playing and reminiscing worked up our appetites, so we decided to walk up to Spinnakers, which is a popular brew pub. There is a lovely boardwalk right from where my brother lives that snakes along the ocean directly to the pub, so we strolled our way there while we laughed and chatted about the old days.

Once there we shared a delicious plate of foccacia bread with oil and vinegar.

For my lunch I decided to go local and order a spinach salad with roasted beets, goat cheese, hazelnuts and a glorious piece of wild BC salmon. I ate every bite!

It was perfect weather and a great lunch was had by all:)

The next morning it was road trip time!

Me and my lifelong best friend, Julie, were off to Parksville, a stunning beach town where I spent many summers as a child. To me it is a magical place where you instantly feel far away from city life.

We immediately headed to the beach, kicked off our shoes and strolled the packed sand, occasionally dipping our feet into warm pools of water left by the ocean when the tide went out.

We lucked out that there happened to be a sandcastle competition on at the time and went down to check out the amazing structures. The theme for this year’s competition was Fairy Tales.

The details were incredible.

The funniest thing happened later when we went out to the store to pick up some groceries. As evidenced by the photo above, the whole day Julie was wearing a purple top. Before we headed out to the store she changed into a striped shirt. When we arrived we debated between cart or basket, opted for the basket and off I went to get a few items. After picking out a few things, I searched Julie out and saw she was putting things into a cart! I touched her arm and asked “Where’s our basket? Did you get a cart instead?” Then I realised…this was not Julie! This was was a lady in a purple top putting her groceries into her cart and was now frozen, looking at me with confusion. I started to laugh and told her she was dressed EXACTLY like my friend. She also laughed and shared with me that she had been guilty in the past of putting items into someone else’s cart. As we chuckled about that I saw Julie coming towards me waving and to my horror she was not dressed like this woman, she was not wearing a purple shirt and I looked crazy! This resulted in a fit of giggles that brought tears to my eyes. It was too funny!

By the way, check out the glorious greens! All local and organic. Heaven.

We ended up back at our suite, made a pot of peppermint tea, roasted some almonds and watched the sunset from our balcony. I was then lulled to sleep by the lapping of the ocean waves.

This is quite a wordy post so before I lull you to sleep I’ll leave it off here and be back tomorrow with Part 2!