Honeymoon Day 10

Fisgard Lighthouse - Looks like a painting!

Last day. Boo! We woke up late, almost noon, got ready and headed to lunch at John's Place. I had a lamb souvlaki wrap, Erin had a falafel wrap. Their bread was amazing too. After that we headed back to our room, and got the camera stuff ready then called for our car and headed to Fort Rodd Hill/Fisgard Lighthouse. We spent a good bit of time wandering around there, visiting the lighthouse and the batteries. 

Honeymoon Day 4

Paddlin' Hard (Photo by David)

This one's picture heavy.

Day 4 started with a quick breakfast, then we got dressed to go kayaking in Ladysmith. We did a 2 hour wildlife tour with Sealegs Kayaking. It was our first time kayaking (we went out in a 2 person sea kayak). Our tour guide David was great, quite knowledgeable about the local wildlife and always on the lookout for creatures to show us. We saw several varieties of starfish,

Sunflower Starfish

Leather Starfish

Ocher Starfish

several herons, a few bald eagles (we heard a lot more), some seals and I'm sure there are other things I'm forgetting. The 2 hour trip was just about right, we were quite exhausted by the end.

We had great views

Shouldn't she be paddling?

After that we headed back to the hotel for our traditional post activity relaxation. We woke up from our nap and headed to dinner. We had planned on dinner at Asteras, a Mediterranean place, but they were super busy and we were hungry so we headed back to the wharf area and decided to try The Lighthouse Bistro. It turned out to be an excellent choice, their Bruschetta was amazing. Erin had a tasty veggie burger and I had fish and chips. The fry cook there was great at their job, the food was well cooked, crunchy and not at all greasy. Perfection.

Erin at dinner

Me at dinner (Photo by Erin)

We found a different gelato shop after dinner (Nanaimo Bar for Erin, Banana for me) then headed back to the pier to see if we could spot another eagle.

The crowd was even larger tonight

On the way down, we heard people gasping at the moon, turned around and saw that it was low in the sky, looking gigantic next to a hotel. Spectacular timing.

Supermoon

Our trip down to the pier turned out to be a very good idea.

Staring Me Down

The above was taken from the end of the pier. I turned around to take a picture of a lovely building, which turned out to be condos.

The Beacon

Erin then started going "baby baby baby" trying to get my attention, I turned and found...

Majestic

This guy was looking for handouts.

Harbor (Harbour?) Seal

I also got some crab shots, as well as some pictures of some people crabbing. One guy crabbing was particularly hilarious, he had some difficulties throwing the small ones back. One was really wrapped up in his basket and he was yelling at it quite a bit. "Get out of there", "Let go ya bonehead!" etc. I think he may have been a little drunk.

"Let Go!"

Mr. Crab Finally Listened

"Run Away!"

We left the pier after a little bit and headed a bit further up the shore, and sat for a while to finish watching the last of the sunlight. Then we headed back, did a little bit of laundry and called it a night.

A few more pictures from today.

Photo by Erin

Tim Horton's count - 7

Honeymoon Day 3

Goodbye Victoria. Goodbye Beautiful View.

I tried for the sunrise again, but the clouds weren't havin' any of it. I went back to sleep a couple of hours, then we woke up, had breakfast on the balcony again, then we had to pack up and check out. While we were having breakfast a gull decided to stop by and hang out on the ledge of the balcony.

Glaucous-winged Gull

Honeymoon Day 2

Lafarge (it amuses me for some reason)

Next day we woke up early to try to watch the sun rise but the weather was uncooperative. We went back to sleep and woke up a few hours later, had breakfast on the balcony then headed to the Royal BC Museum. On the way to the museum we saw The Empress hotel, so I grabbed a shot of it.

The Empress in daylight (with a bit of Lightroom magic applied to correct perspective distortion)

Honeymoon Day 1

Rare golden light on our honeymoon

I'm going to split my honeymoon posts into each day, since it would be way too many pictures and way too much text in one post otherwise. Our entire honeymoon was spent on Vancouver Island, where we visited 4 different cities. We stayed at 5 different hotels/resorts, 2 nights each.

Our honeymoon journey began with waking up at 3 am (well ok we may have hit snooze and actually gotten up closer to 3:20) to get ready, pack the car and head to the airport to catch a 5:45 flight. From Lexington we flew to Chicago, where we had a 2 hour layover. On the way to Chicago, we watched the sunrise.

The crappy plane window made for some interesting flare

Then from Chicago, a flight to Calgary and finally we flew to Victoria from there. Once in Victoria we picked up a rental car from National in the airport. We got an upgrade to a Mazda5 since they didn't have any standard sized sedans available, which turned out be an awesome car for road tripping and carrying around all of our clothes and my copious amounts of photography stuff. Finally, we headed to our hotel, the Delta Victoria. Our oh so amazing hotel. We had the Olympic View Room, which as far as we could tell was the only room in the hotel with a private balcony view of the Inner Harbour.

That View!

We settled in, enjoyed the great view from our balcony for a while then headed to a dinner buffet at Green Cuisine. It was a pay by weight buffet, where all the options were vegan and there were also a lot of gluten free choices. It kind of showed both sides of the vegan food debate. Some of the food was really bland and some was really amazing.

Erin enjoying the balcony

Following dinner we did a little convenience store shopping then headed back to the hotel where we walked a path up and down the shoreline, chasing the sunset.

Delta Victoria (that open area to the right of the D, that's our balcony)

Totem pole along the water

Johnson Street Bridge

While we were out there, I got some of the best pictures I've taken of Erin.

My Angel

More sun flare

The moon was out and it was getting darker, so I grabbed another landscape on the way in.

Inner Harbour with the sunset at my back

Finally we headed in, had a wonderful lemon tart in the hotel lounge and headed to our room for the night. I took a couple of nighttime shots, since it was easy and I had the tripod.

Nighttime view from our balcony

The Empress Hotel

BC Parliament

Tim Horton's count - 2