The rest of Victoria

Fisherman's Wharf, Victoria

Despite our best intentions for our four weeks in Victoria, we found ourselves struggling with keeping to our diet. It wasn’t that we were being terribly bad – most of our meals were still strictly by the rules – but we found ourselves wanting those little extras, especially if we went out. Like the time we went to Fisherman’s Wharf, and ended up having fish and chips.

We had a couple of times that we went out to eat, and whilst we picked fairly well-behaved things, there was just that added temptation to have some yam fries, or for Nic to have a naughty sauce on his pasta.

Fisherman's Wharf, Victoria

And then there was the fact that the weather was glorious the whole time we were there, so one day we gave in to having an ice cream, and another we succumbed to sitting in a pub garden with a bottle of wine.

This was still all incredibly well behaved compared with our old way of life, but it was still too many bad things to achieve the weight loss we were aiming for.

Canada Day Celebrations, Victoria

One thing that we knew that we weren’t even planning to try to resist, was our favourite Nanaimo bar.

I’ll talk more about these in a later post, but for now, a Nanaimo bar is a very tasty, but very naughty cake, and when we were here last time, we discovered them in a bakery that was on our route home, so we’d often pop in to grab one – peanut butter for Nic and mint for me.

Canada Day Celebrations, Victoria

So one day, we headed up to the bakery, ready to get our treat, only to discover that the location was now a building site. I think Nic may actually have let out a small howl of disappointment! Not to be deterred though, I figured that as this was a pretty popular bakery, there was a reasonable chance that it may have relocated, and luckily, this was right, and we managed to find it just a little further along from its old spot. They didn’t have any mint ones though, so I resisted any alternatives on this occasion, but Nic got his peanut butter one, and was very happy.

Canada Day Celebrations, Victoria

Aside from that, we pootled about a bit.  We looked in on some of the live music for the jazz festival including going along to a show one night. That was OK, albeit nothing spectacular. We checked out the Canada day celebrations, which despite this being a big deal because it is the 150^th anniversary of the confederation of Canada, were a bit disappointing. The fireworks were good in the evening though.

Willows Beach, Victoria

We also took the bus out to Estevan Avenue, one day. We got off in Oak Bay Avenue, and walked the rest of the way up, so by the time we got there we felt virtuous enough to allow ourselves a few extra syns with our reasonably healthy lunch at The Village. Then we wandered along to the beach and back, and gave in to having a tiny cupcake. Feeling a bit guilty about that, we decided to make up for it by walking all the way back, which took about an hour. That got the steps up on the Fitbits!

Estevan Avenue, Victoria

I'm not sure that Estevan Avenue is really worth a trip on its own, but it could certainly be done in conjunction with the Oak Bay area for a good day out.

So overall, Victoria was a pleasant place to have spent four weeks in the sunshine, but it ended up being a bit of a “neither/nor” place. We didn’t go completely mad, and revert to our old ways of eating and drinking whatever we liked, but neither had we managed to stick strictly to our regime. In the end, we lost some weight while we were here, but not as much as we should have done, especially when we knew what was coming up next….

Fisherman's Wharf, Victoria

Fisherman's Wharf, Victoria

Canada Day Celebrations, Victoria

Canada Day Celebrations, Victoria

Canada Day Celebrations, Victoria