Another early morning, I'm awake at 5.30 to the sound of sirens.  Imagine my excitement when I look through the window to see not only a fire engine but snow on the cars in the street, a quick shower, dressed and I'm down in the street at 6 am to find it's now raining with slight snow flurries.  I managed to get a few flakes on me and a few photo's of snow covered cars and trees. 7.30 and breakfast has been delivered to my room.   Funny how a full stomach makes you function better, it comes to me that I really need to check my schedule for the next few days and realize I've left part of my itinerary at home, better arc up the laptop while eating breakfast and check if I still have the email attachments, yup, they're there.  Reception can print them off for me thank goodness.  The files are transferred to my flash drive, I rush downstairs only to find that the hotel pc doesn't have Adobe and can't open pdf.  An hour later and no luck converting them to word or anything else that might be useful I notice it's 9.00 and I'm supposed to be checking out to be at the bus station for 9.30, better finish packing hey.

9.10 and I'm in a cab on the way to the bus station surrounded by streets, rooftops, cars, parks, gardens etc., covered in a blanket of the white stuff, all that snow and I can't even walk in it.  Oh well, maybe there'll be some when I get to Victoria.  I arrive at the bus station to find the bus is boarding in 5 minutes, great, no time for photo's or walking in the snow here either.  9.42 and we're on the move and again we pass streets, rooftops etc covered in, ok, you got the picture, no need to tell you all that again  lol. It's raining hard out but there are still the odd snowflakes falling with it, not much good for building snowmen. At least I got some  photo's of it for you now though.  10.05 and the battery in the camera dies, no worries, there's a spare in my camera bag, well, there was last night, must  have dropped out when I grabbed it to run outside earlier, I hope housekeeping found it. The closer we get to Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal the heavier the rain is, it must have been raining all night here, no snow at all, just flooded fields.  We are on the ferry at 10.30 and am I spewing that the battery died, the scenery around the islands is beautiful, but that's ok, I'll get them again on the way home tomorrow, you'll just have to look at them in reverse order.  12.30 and we're back on the bus to leave the ferry at Schwartz Bay.  We were the first bus on so we got to watch the back doors open and the ferry being steered into the terminal.  It was a weird feeling watching the boat open up and nothing but water in front of us, you got to admire the skill of the skipper to steer a boat that big into port, Hopefully I'll get to see it again tomorrow and I can take some photo's.  It's a 40 minute bus ride now to Victoria with heavy rain all the way.  Checked in at the Empress, rearranged the furniture to get to a powerpoint to charge my battery.  Made a call to the Rosedale to see if the other battery has been found and had to leave a message, hope they call me back soon.  Phoned the coach line to check on my Butchart Garden tour at 5pm tomorrow to find that I'll be lucky to see it all if I want to get back to the main land on time, so I get booked on tonight's tour instead, that means I've not got much time now to find a bank and get some much needed cash, and that means venturing out in torrential rain and a gale force wind, well, not really gale force but it's windy.  I've got an hour so if I don't find an ATM that takes my card in half an hour it's back to the hotel with $5.00 cash.  2 minutes up the road and I'm drenched, can't see a thing, wish they made windscreen wipers for glasses.  The Bank of  Montreal is open so I'll try in there and if the machine doesn't work they might be able to do something over the counter for me, but this is good, I've now got 40 minutes to wander in a couple of shops I've seen.  The Christmas Shop is awesome, I'm definitely going to have to come back here one day and spend a couple of hours in there and if I win the lotto spend a couple of thousand too.  Popped into a souvenir shop and bought a few bits.  A quick change into dry trousers and I'm at the bus station for 4.45, mind you, there are puddles in my coat pockets but it's the only coat I've got so it will have to do.
 
The bus left at 4.55 as there were only 7 passengers doing the tour, guess most people thought the tour would be cancelled due to the weather, or they didn't want to brave it like we did. I have to say that it was certainly worth getting my jeans soaked and squelching in my boots for 2 hours to see the gardens.  The lights were awesome and photo's do not do them justice, should have brought the video camera with me, luckily they sell dvd's in the shop there.  We could walk around the place at our own pace, and the driver set us the task of finding everyone of the 12 days of Christmas displays, which I did and got the photo's to prove it.

The shop was a nice place to warm up and spend some more money.  Had dinner at the Blue Poppy Restaurant where we were entertained by a magician, the kids there thought he was terrific and to be honest, some of the stuff he did I found pretty good too. There were also musicians and carollers to entertain us, very brave of them considering the weather.  It didn't stop raining the whole time we were there but you can't pass saturation point and I'd got there a long time ago.  I wasn't cold though, so kept wandering around and finding other things I'd missed on my first tour around.  Oh, forgot the good bit, there were free umbrellas, see through ones, at the entrance and at the door of each shop and restaurant, you just put yours in the sling when you went in a shop and took another on the way out.  It might be the same one you put in but it might not be too.  Never asked how many go missing though.


9pm and back on the bus for home.  The driver took us a different way home seeing as we were all staying at the Empress and were happy to take advantage of his time.  He took us through Chinatown where he showed us the narrowest street in North America, it's a legal street.Unfortunately the pic of that didn't turn out because we were moving past it too quickly, couldn't make out anything in the blur.   Anyway, here I am, back in the hotel room, in warm pyjama's and the wet stuff is hanging on the shower rail.  I guess I should get some sleep as it's 11.30 and I really would like to do some sightseeing before my  10.30am check out.

Sunday morning and it's another early morning so I can have a quick wander around the area before it's time to head back to Vancouver.  It's almost daybreak but light enough for a couple of photo's and check out what's open and when.  It is so peaceful walking around at this time of the day, not many people around and being Sunday the shops open late so I can have a good window shop, see what's worth going back to.  Back to the hotel for 8am and breakfast, the Miniature World in the hotel doesn't open till 9 and the souvenir shop across the road doesn't open till 9.30, couldn't have worked out better for for me.  I managed to get around Miniature World in 25 minutes, mind you, if I'd had the grandkids with me, I could have spent hours in there.  There really was a lot to see, and stories to read, but remember, I'm on a time limit here and that souvenir shop across the road is calling me. lol

Checked out on time and was at the bus depot for the 11am departure only to find the bus doesn't leave till 12.  Oh well, time to read some of the book I haven't had  much time to get to. I hand my voucher over to the guy at the ticket counter who tells me to give it to the driver.  Ok, easy enough, not, the driver wouldn't accept it, he said he'd never heard of the company and to get a ticket issued, ok, I can do that, not, the ticket issuer took it, told me to follow him and he took it back to the driver, who still refused to accept it, so back into the ticket office, get a ticket issued and finally I am on the bus.  Now you can follow the cruise back to Vancouver and to be honest, you're probably lucky the battery did die on the way in, it is a lot calmer today so the photo's turned out a lot better than they would have done had I taken them yesterday with a gale  blowing and a pretty good swell on the water.