the paramour and i went to victoria yesterday. primarily to buy new boots for the both of us. i'd found out that
mountain equipment co-op has a brandnew store there, which rules. and i was up early enough on friday to pester the paramour into a quick start. i remember enough of victoria from when we lived there to score free parking, and we checked out sports trader, ocean river sports, and
capital iron on the way to MEC. the paramour hadn't ever been to the latter, and we didn't really spent much time browsing, boots being foremost on our minds. but even for somebody like me who isn't much into shopping, capital iron is a fun store.
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boots at MEC was easy-peasy; the first pair i tried fit like a glove (salomon remains my friend); i tried a couple of others just to be sure, but those were it. turned around to see that the paramour had tried and liked the very same kind. amused the salesperson. |
while the paramour paid i wandered around a little and saw that seaward has a cute little play kayak out by the name of
intrigue. seaward is a local company, and i really like the underwater view panel. this would be a fun toy to carry along on the boat.
we were reaching the limits of our attention span for shopping and decided to head out to james bay where we used to live, leave the truck there, and walk back downtown to scout for food and decide what else to do. and lo, the
pacific undersea gardens called to us. this underwater acquarium had always, always been closed when we'd felt like checking them out before, and even though we were sure it was gonna be relatively cheesy, it simply had to be done. and yes, it was cheesy, but still fun, because they sure did have a lot of local fauna. "kelp forest" -- not so much kelp as that i'd call it a forest, no; there was an occasional strand of kelp present. the "specially designed tidal pool" was the measliest touching pool i've ever seen, and the poor anemone did not wave its tentacles about -- who could blame it? but lots and lots of rock fish, a wolf eel, and a pacific octopus, and i communed with fish for a while. also, getting out of the sun was a good thing.
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this is my favourite picture of a curious rockfish checking me out.
i really need to get off my ass and get windows installed; i tried to remove the noise caused by the low light conditions with the gimp and i just don't get the same results as i get with noise ninja. |
after that we wandered along the inner harbour, casually looking at the vendors who were there for the annual ICA folk fest (more carvers than i've seen before, but rather less variety otherwise). the folk fest wanted money to get in to most of the stalls (and of course the main stage), but since it was late in the day we didn't really want to spend the money, and just wandered around downtown. went into the lush store, since everybody has been raving so much about lush. it made me want to eat. :) ended up at millos for greek food, which was fine, but not superb -- that was ok though, we were aiming for "fine".
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dropped by dallas road and the shore to look at the sun casting pink setting rays onto the olympics
and then home, with just enough light to make it across the malahat.
i always want to stay longer in victoria. once we're on the boat i'm pretty sure we'll spend part of our year there.
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