Mike and I just got back from our get-away in romantic Victoria, Canada and so here some pictures and quick description of our trip.

We took an early ferry through the San Juan Islands, and arrived in Canada around 12pm. We first went to the Butchart Gardens, which are about halfway between the ferry and the city of Victoria. Luckily , the day was really gorgeous and clear. You can tell from the photos that there was a lot of sunshine (it kept washing out our pictures!). By the way, in some of these pictures I tried to counteract the washing-out effect of the flash by turning it off, and that's why a lot of the pictures are fuzzy (oh well!). We were surprised at how many flowers were still blooming - we thought it would be all bedraggled and wet like it is in Washington :)

After the Gardens, we drove down into Victoria and checked into our B&B, the Fairholme Manor, a renovated Victorian home. We would definitely recommend it to anyone who might plan a trip to Victoria in the near future. (Although, if anyone is going to come up this way , I would also recommend The Walker Manor. It comes with a queen size blow up mattress, your OWN tv, a shared bathroom with the 2 year old resident and a quality breakfast - depending on how tired the hostess is in the morning).

Our B&B was literally next door to the residence of the British Lt. Governor for the island, and the grounds are open to the public. So we explored that a bit, the south side of the house had a beautiful view over the Strait de Juan de Fuca to the Olympic Mtns on the Washington side. That night we ate in downtown Victoria at a recommended restaurant - very yummy. We walked around a bit and saw the Parliament building all lit up, etc.

The next day, to summarize more briefly as I'm writing more than I intended to (!), we went to Craigdorroch Castle (a restored Victorian residence, kind of like Hearst Castle but much smaller) drove around the coast, had tea at a Scottish tea room (Mike had a sandwich and hot chocolate, much more manly than my crumpets and tea!) and then did some souvenir shopping. That night we saw Harry Potter at the IMAX.

The next morning we caught the ferry back and made it to Lake Stevens just in time for "Papa Walker" and "Bama" to get on the road to Moscow. A million thanks to Sandy and Monte for watching Avery while we had some time away! And that's it! I'm having trouble uploading pictures, so I'll try to get some pictures up later. - Sarah