1 day to go - until we go home!

We have been in beautiful Victoria BC for 5 days now. It is currently 9:40PM local time on Monday night. It's been an amazing few days... let me try to recount it up until now.

Tuesday was our last day at work, and I was able to get off 1/2 hr early. I got home, and finished cleaning the house, and packing the rest of the clothes. Mary was coming to stay at the house for a week to look after Perrin, Neelix & Baxter, and her only codicil was that we clean the house... hey, we're slobs LOL But I did my best. So I stayed up pretty late and cleaned everything but the kitchen itself, and got to bed about 130am Toronto time. Rick and I were both up at 730am when I had to get up and go to the dentist for 8. That done, I came home and finished the living room and also started the kitchen. Rick came home with Pizza that we had for lunch, and I then finished the kitchen. The house done, we waited until 7:30pm when we logged online into the WestJet site to book our seats on the plane. That done, we got our hair cut and got back to the house (after hitting Walmart) about 10pm or so. We wanted to try to get to bed early, as we needed to be up early for the flight.... but it didn't work out that way. We couldn't sleep. We ended up sleeping from about 1am to 330am... where we got up. We then did some last minute packing and getting everything ready before the airport shuttle picked us up at 430am. We were off to the airport!

We arrived and got through everything fine. We were about an hour early for boarding, but better early then late. The plane was different then what I expected, but it was good. Lots of leg room... I got an aisle seat, Rick sat at the window. No one was between us, so we were able to stretch out and get comfortable. WestJet has satellite TV in the backs of the seats in front of you, so I was able to flip through channels and find some cool things to watch during the 5 hour flight. The only complaint I have on that one, is that the arm rest didn't go all the way up between the seats.... and us being bigger people, they dug into my shoulders.

So we arrive in Vancouver. Nice airport :) Good thing - we're spending a couple hours there tomorrow!! Erica (Rick's cousin) meets us at the airport and takes us back to her house. Tim, her husband, had picked up Ethan, their son (their daughter Emily was with us) and met us back at the house. Eventually, we made it to the Vancouver Aquarium. Rick was really big on being there because he grew up watching Danger Bay, and it was filmed there. It was actually pretty cool. We went through the actual "fish" stuff pretty quick. Most of that I've seen somewhere before, but we got some cool pictures of the jelly fish. I'll post them later :) Afterwards, we got to see the dolphins, the beluga whales, the sea otters and the seals... more great pictures :)

Erica then drives us to the ferry docks. We arrived just in time to catch the ferry across to Vancouver Island. The ride took about an hour and 40 min... when we disembarked, we caught a cab afterwards into the city. The cab was expensive!! It was about $60 to get there... I was shocked they didn't have a flat rate anywhere... oh well, lesson learned (put it this way... tomorrow to get back to the airport, which is only 5-10 min south of the ferry dock, we're taking a shuttle bus for $14 per person - less than half of the cost!!).

We arrived at the hotel... and it was amazing. Our Bell boy, Kyle, was SOOO nice.... as soon as he saw us get out of the cab, he unloaded our bags, and walked us through the walk-in process. I know that it's his job, but he continued to offer suggestions on what to see and asked what we planned to do, etc... we tipped him when he left the room and showed us everything... our room is great! We got the two double beds... it also has a large bathroom with a great shower, a TV in the cabinet with the bar fridge (that we got stocked but never used), a desk where we're keeping the computer locked up, a nice chair and a great view of the city... we almost don't want to leave!!