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

Wineries and Canada Day in Kelowna (Throwback post)

Kelowna

We'd forgotten all about Canada Day, until we arrived in Kelowna and found people getting ready to celebrate it.

Canada Day is the anniversary of the creation of the self governing Dominion of Canada, a federation of the four provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec, which happened on 1 July 1867.

Since then of course, Canada has expanded, and now has ten provinces and three territories.

Canada Day, Kelowna

Now in many countries, a day like this would be highly nationalistic and focussed entirely on the people and things that are 'classically Canadian'. What we loved about the celebrations here was that they were far more inclusive.

Canada Day, Kelowna

Yes, of course, there was plenty of Canadian red and white on show, and people were displaying - and wearing - flags and so forth, which was great.

But they were also celebrating the way that Canada is made up of people from many varied heritages.

So their festivities included music and dance from First Nations people, the British, and the many other nationalities that have been absorbed into the Canadian population.

Canada Day, Kelowna

Not that Kelowna has a particularly high instance of minorities. 98% have either some form of Christian belief or no religion, and 90.4% are white and 3.4% First Nations, so other ethnic groups make up only 6.2%. Nonetheless, it was great to see this being such a positive embrace of all of the people that make up their country, without in any way detracting from this being a national day. Wouldn't it be nice if that is how we could all be, all of the time?

Canada Day Cake, Kelowna

Of course you can't have a celebration without cake, and there was a huge one. It was actually quite tasty too. And then in the evening we had the other thing that seems to be a mandatory part of any celebration these days - fireworks.

Kelowna is Canada's 22nd largest city, but its population is under 200,000, so it isn't huge.

Kelowna

It sits in the Okanagan Valley and on the lake of the same name.

It draws a lot of visitors, partly for the scenery and activities locally, and partly for its local wineries. You can probably guess why we were here. We did look around the town, which was nice enough - and there was a pretty good BBQ meat restaurant called Memphis Blues.

Kelowna vineyards

But on to the wine. Having spent some time in town, and unexpectedly, on seeing the Canada Day celebrations, we only had one day to check out wineries, and getting around them proved more tricky than we had expected.

There were buses, but they didn't seem to run to quite the same routes and timetables that we had. Not that we were the only ones waiting; there were lots of locals looking perplexed and irritated too.

Mission Hill Winery, Kelowna

But we did make it to two wineries. The first was Mission Hill. Needless to say, the bus only took us to the bottom of the hill, and we had to walk up. This would have been OK had the weather not decided to give us a mini heatwave.

We had set off prepared, with water, hats and sunscreen, but it was such an incredibly hot day, and there was hardly any shade, so even taking it very slowly, we arrived shattered, sweaty, and swearing that the wines had better be worth it.

Mission Hill Winery, Kelowna

A very lovely lady met us when we arrived, and immediately got us some iced water. She was pretty impressed that we had persisted with the walk up. Everyone else there had arrived by car or coach.

Mission Hill Winery, Kelowna

We had to wait for the next tour and tasting, which gave us time to cool down a bit - standing in front of their big fans - and then wander out to take in the beautiful setting. Being at the top of a hill can be hard work, but it does have some advantages at least.

Mission Hill Winery, Kelowna

After the wine tasting - you'll be relieved to know the wines were good - we bought a couple of bottles and again spoke to the lady who met us when we arrived.

She asked us where we were going next, and she then told us that she was just finishing work, and offered to drive us there, saving us walking back down the hill and waiting in the sun for another bus. How nice of her.

Quails' Gate Winery, Kelowna

She dropped us at our second winery, which was Quails' Gate. This also had some great wines, and was thankfully on the same road as the bus route, so we didn't have to walk far to get the bus back.