Canada Trip: Day 2

Last night before I went to bed, I made brunch reservations at Bear and Joey.  Not sure of the connection, but everything here is supposed to be Australian.  That and the food looked really, really good.  We left the Air BnB and headed into Victoria.  I dropped everyone off right out front so they could get our reservation claimed on time while I parked.  The breakfast and drinks were pretty amazing.

After breakfast, we went back to the house and I got tickets for the Malahat Skywalk which was a little bit out of town, but not too bad.  I'm glad we did it because even though it's not something we normally would visit, it was well done: a short hike on an elevated boardwalk about 50ft in the air through the forest was kind of neat.  And the boardwalk ends at this impressive tower with a corkscrew boardwalk that leads to the top where there's an amazing view.

Storm clouds gathering over Mt. Baker in the distance (above) and Saanich Inlet (below)

Even more impressive is the opening at the top has this industrial netting that allows you to walk across or lay on while looking a down over a hundred feet to the bottom.  And then rather than walk all the way down the corkscrew boardwalk, you can slide down a corkscrew slide.  Not gonna lie, you get going pretty fast when you're sitting on the piece of carpet they give you to slide on!

After Malahat, we drove back to Victoria and to Driftwood Brewery.  I had to go here because the label art they use on their bottles and the names of their beers are fantastic.  The beer didn't disappoint, either!

After a beer, we headed to Chinatown.  We again got great parking right at the entry and walked in from there.  On the list of places to check out was Fan Tan Alley where Emma immediately found a cool record shop and Dohnele and Zoe found a fun gift shop.  We were going to go to Bao for dinner, but there was a line out the store and down the street, so we opted for another place on our list: La Taqueria Pinche Taco Shop which had no line and a good cocktail lineup.

After dinner, we drove to Craigdarroch Castle.  It was right at sunset which was perfect because all I really wanted to do was take a few pictures of the outside and call it good.  So we had the grounds to ourselves and the kids were able to run around with a couple deer that were wandering around the neighborhood.

With the small bit of daylight we had left, we drove down to Dallas Road and Clover Point Park to watch the sunset.  It was amazingly beautiful albeit very windy, but that just meant there were windsurfers to watch as an added bonus.

Once the sun had fully set, everyone had a craving for bubble tea so we went to Ding Tea which was actually open and is apparently super popular in Canada.  Anyway, we got our tea and headed home for the night.