Day 11 - What is poutine???

The city of Victoria in late morning. It is beautiful and extremely well-organized. It feels like an old European city, but with American-style drivability and roads that are sized correctly for cars.

We went to lunch at Skinny Tato Polish Restaurant. We have challenged ourselves to try new things. The Polish woman who owns the restaurant gave us recommendations/ commands about what we should order. We just went along with the recommendations, and once we had ordered we were not sure what we would get. We got potato pancakes stuffed with sauerkraut and mushrooms, as well as cabbage rolls stuffed with bacon. These were all new combinations to is, but they were actually surprisingly delicious. It was a whole new set of flavor combinations: a bit like Chinese food, a bit like Italian food, but really just unlike anything else we had tried.

Butchart Gardens. The Butchart family owned a cement plant, and Jennie Butchart created the garden to beautify the area. The family still owns the estate, but it is open to visitors. It is extremely beautiful. It is almost difficult to comprehend how beautiful it is when you are there because of how many different plants you can see.

Te remarkable beauty of the place. It is wonderful to just walk around and see everything. Catherine feels like the yellow flower in the picture above looks like it is fake and made of wire.

Us in the gardens.

Daniel got a cherry amaretto gelato, and Catherine got one that was rose petal flavored. We ate them in the Italian Garden.

Viking exhibit at the Royal British Columbia Museum. Many of these artifacts are real and are on loan from museums in Sweden.

The name "Albers" written in runes.

A wire matrix suspending various bolts. It doesn't look like much, until you realize the bolts are real bolts from a Viking ship burial, suspended exactly where they would have been on the ship.

Natural History: a mammoth and a sea lion.

First Nations Exhibit: the highlight of this area is the complete house, formerly belonging to a native chief, which is fully presented in the museum.

Views of the Empress Hotel and the Parliament Buildings.

The Pennyfarthing Pub in the Oak Bay neighborhood for a late dinner.

An "Irish Flight" of beers: Harp, Smithwick's, Kilkenny, and of course, Guinness. Since Daniel's parents flew to Ireland the day before, we thought ordering an Irish Flight seemed appropriate.

Catherine was intrigued by the menu item called "poutine." Neither of us had tried it, but Daniel had already heard of it an had a vague notion as to what it was. Catherine read the description, then asked the waitress what it was. The waitress was friendly, but reacted somewhat the way an American waitress would if you asked her to explain what this "hamburger" thing was all about. Catherine ordered a half order, and it was in fact pretty good.

Overall, the day went wonderfully. Victoria is an incredibly enjoyable city, and both of us have talked about returning to spend more time here.