Tourist Circuit

The weather here is great. The apartment is on the 9th floor and when I woke up (at 5 am) I could see for miles, snow covered mountains rising to the east. After breakfast I went out to buy packaginf material to send a box of Swedish beers to Ontario as I'm doing a regular beer trade with a guy there. Later we walked up and down the tourist ghetto/shopping streets of Victoria. I have never seen so many grizzlies and mooses dressed up in the uniform of the Canadian mounted police. We walked to the store to buy more groceries and then cooked lunch. In the afternoon we took a small, even diminutive, ferry across the harbour to Songhee. With all the sprawling condos that area actually looks a lot like the western harbour in Malmö - shiny new but kind of desolate. Stopped at the famous Spinnakers (a local micro brewery) but I didn't find the beers I tried more than average. A disappointment. Sitting on the patio we looked at the sea planes landing and taking off and the boats sailing off to the islands. I guess the presence of all the boats and aeroplanes gives the place a Canadian touch. This is a country where most of the land is inaccessible unless you fly or sail there. We continued walking to West Bay and Hidden Harbour where we caught the ferry back across to Fisherman's Wharf. The "authentic" Barb's Fish'n'Chips was crammed with tourists and we walked back to the hotel. The kids went down to swim in the hotel pool but it was too deep for Esbjörn)-: Made burgers for dinner and everyone collapsed from jet lag at nine.