2.06.2012 – 2.06.2012  21 °C

We had a really pleasant sleep in this morning in our funky kitchenette room! Brekky was our usual tasty affair before we got all of our gear organised to either be sent home or to be packed up for delivery to the Salvos. Most of the gear we were sending home was clothing that wasn’t required and souvenirs that we had purchased along the way. The gear for the Salvos is all of the kitchen equip we have purchased along the trip to give us the ability to cook our own food (although we need the same gear on the east coast, our suitcases are pretty full so we just can’t take things like pots and pans with us).

Our plan for the day was to go and have a look at the Sidney ferry terminal (the place we are going tomorrow to get us back to the US), offload our gear and finally to go and have a look at the Burchart Gardens.

The drive out to Sidney was really quite beautiful. This part of Vancouver Island is really nice, plenty of beautiful old houses and the vegetation really reminds me of the type you would see around Coffs Harbour! So it feels quite homely! The town itself is a bit like a sea side village (South West Rocks style), we also got a chance to see where our ferry leaves from tomorrow. After a basic drive around we worked our way across the island towards Burchart.

On the way, we came across a small community that was having a local fete with a Salvation Army store across the road! This ticked a couple of boxes for us; a place for us to get rid of our kitchen junk and grab a tasty morsel for our morning tea. We dumped our stuff first at the salvos and then went across the road to the girl guides fete for a tasty treat. We treated ourselves to a couple of spring rolls and some freshly cooked donuts.. yummy!! We were also treated to thirty odd people doing  zumba, they even had a bloke dressed up in a bear suit strutting his stuff!! J

Our last stop of the day was to Burchart Gardens. They are privately owned gardens on the outskirts of Victoria. The three of us were pretty surprised at the cost to enter… $30 each for us to go inside and look at someone’s backyard!! D had been to these gardens before though and assured us that it was worth every penny… and he was right! The gardens are spectacular.. probably some of the best gardens in the world. They were first designed and laid out in the early 1900s by the lady of the estate (Burchart of course!). She managed to populate acres and acres with hundreds of plants. Today the garden is divided into separate areas. There is a rose garden (which isn’t in bloom.. not summer yet!), a Japanese garden, an Italian garden, and even a sunken garden! The gardens are completed with huge lakes that are finished off with fountains. The most unusual thing in the gardens are these tree sculptures that are hidden in different places throughout the gardens. We found bears, deers and a tiger! We finished our tour of the gardens with some soup and bread for lunch and then made our way back to the hotel.

Our day ended with us having a long soak in the hotel hot tub and a tasty home made Indian curry.. What a way to end our last day in Canada on the west coast.

Song of the Day– Richard Harris, MacArthur Park