Thursday, April 23, 2015

Saturday in Victoria

Our Saturday in Victoria was just as fun-filled as the day before. Fortunately, we were able to start the day a little later that 5 and 6am!

We had planned on spending time at Beacon Hill Park's Children's farm but wanted to go to the Museum first so that, by the time Dragon was tired and ornery we'd be at a place with a bunch of animals rather than in a museum with lots of people confined in tight hallways.

Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out the way we had hoped.

We walked from the park to the museum, and along our walk, saw lots of things that Dragon wanted to stay and play on/with, etc.

Right outside our van he found a peacock which immediately peaked his interest.


Then, about 50 feet from there he found about 50 ducks being fed by another family--who kindly gave Dragon a piece of bread to feed some ducks as well.


Of course, the big bullying geese came and stole most of the pieces he threw to the ducks.


They were big bullies! I was rooting for the ducks every time a bread crumb was thrown but the geese usually won.


Then, about 200 feet away from the ducks we found this awesome grove of trees. We probably would have stopped and let Dragon play on them but there was a homeless guy and his dog camping in the middle of it and it was awkward because Dragon didn't want to leave but we didn't want to come out and say we were playing in someone's bedroom so we tried to convince him of cooler things that may or may not be just ahead.


After a long walk we finally found our destination! 


Earlier, I mentioned how our plans to have a happy Dragon at the museum didn't quite work out? Well, yeah. He wasn't happy. He wanted "Up!" the entire time. Except for when there were rocks, so ... needing a happy child, I let him climb on these rocks. And then I got in trouble! Oops.

The lady said he was about to make alarms go off, which, Ben and I thought was silly because we find it pretty silly that they'd have this "exhibit" heavily guarded by alarms. She could have just said he shouldn't be climbing on the rocks.


Either way, I told him to leave his happy spot. And he did. But he continued to whine and (sometimes) cry for pretty much the rest of the museum.

But they had cool animals!

Dragon is actually standing under a fun ceiling that allows you to whisper and, if a person is standing in the right spot across the room, they can hear you. It also had a good echo which Dragon found very entertaining.


At least one of our children was happy ... for the moment.



The "hairy elephant" as we called it to try and explain what it was to Dragon.



The museum had some awesome exhibits that allowed you to feel like you'd stepped back in time. Which would have been even more fun if my preschooler hadn't thrown a fit when I tried to see it for myself. 

Apparently only Dragon and Daddy were allowed to have fun ... I had to stay by the stroller with Colt.


The front of the ship!


Colt transported back in time with me. At least HE doesn't mind my company!


And, since Dragon was being weird and not allowing me to see fun stuff, Colt and I wandered off hoping Dragon would come to his senses. While we were wandering we stumbled onto a farm!


And then I noticed that someone wasn't so happy anymore. In fact, he was really sleepy but he refused to sleep!



After a visit to the farm, I wandered into an old mine shaft.

They had it set up really well. You felt like you were in a mine shaft (except probably not as claustrophobic). It was fun seeing how they'd use the tree trunks to hold up the shafts.





After the mine, I met back up with the other half of my family and we headed down an old mainstreet.


Once again, it was so well done! They had all the details to make you feel like you were there. Good thing we had our stroller or else I might have forgotten which time period we were in!


My favorites were the train station (don't mind the overly tired child)


and the theater!


The Grand Hotel was ... grand!



And, finally, just before we left the museum I found the totem pole room which was darkish and it tribal music playing so I just sat in a corner and rocked him to sleep. Life was better once one of our children was sleeping.


Dragon started asking the elevator doors, "Open, please!" and when they don't open right away he starts asking more and more dramatically until they finally do what he's asked. When he's not crying, this kid cracks me up!



Now that it was obviously getting later in the day we knew we needed to get food in our bellies before Dragon had a major meltdown (more so than freaking out about me going in a pretend boat! Seriously. That was just so lame!)

A place that I'd read a lot of good reviews about was Red Fish Blue Fish and I knew it was on the water and not too far from where we were so we decided to go hunt it down.


We found it! And the line was super long but, one of our kids was sleeping so we figured it wouldn't be too bad.



And then, because we stopped moving, he woke up. And his brother attacked him out of excitedness. 



So, the gallant Ben stood in line with Colt while Dragon and I looked out at the water and watched seaplanes drive in and out of the harbour.


And, then we played with the umbrellas. And ran around. And played with the umbrellas some more.



And went back to watching seaplanes. And then we watched a guy getting his yacht ready to sail.

And then, after 45 minutes of waiting, we finally had our food! 

And all Colt wanted was the root beer.





Dragon actually ate a lot more than we were expecting, especially considering we had fish and chips and fish tacos.

We figured we'd stop and get him a smoothie somewhere along the way back so he could get a bit more in him but he fell asleep like two minutes later.

So we walked in peace and Ben posed for a picture with The Empress (on the left) and Parliament (far back).


Closer up pictures of The Empress. The ivy on the building just adds to the character. It was a really pretty building.


But, in my opinion it paled in comparison with the Parliament Building. (And also my child)



And so, we napped in the sun and absorbed some Vitamin D.




And then we decided we should be on our way so we could spend plenty of time at the petting zoo before it closed. The horse and carriage is for Dragon since he was asleep when we saw it!


Back at the park, this picture doesn't really do it justice. The whole place was just awesome. I really wish we'd had one more day so we could have spent more time here.


Anyway, we got to the petting zoo at like 4:10 and discovered it closed at 4:00. Luckily the doors were still open so we could see the peacocks.



And, we saw The Running of the Goats! Which I guess they do at closing every day. It was pretty cute! Unfortunately, we'd just woken Dragon up to see it so he did not want to be there.




If you ask him about the goats he'll tell you he didn't like them because he wanted to be home.

After the petting zoo closed we went to the Fisherman's Wharf and saw a seal being fed and played at the park until the sun went down behind the trees.







We were going to eat a nice birthday dinner since we were too exhausted to do anything the night before but Ben and I were still stuffed from lunch and Dragon wanted pizza so we stopped at a Little Caesars. And, turns out, pizza outside of America is small!! Dragon loved it.

So for dinner, Dragon got his pizza and Ben and I had ice cream. It was a good way to end a long day! 


[After thought: After a long day of playing, we'd come back to the house and turn on a show before getting ready for bed. Something Dragon isn't used to, however, is normal cable television. First, when a cartoon was on and it went to commercial, he looked at us expectantly and said, "more show!" We tried to explain to him it would be back but he wasn't a fan of that. The second thing that he really didn't get was that we couldn't just pick whatever show we wanted to watch. We just had to be happy with whatever random cartoon they had on at the moment. Netflix spoils us, and I'm okay with it because it's WAY cheaper than paying for cable.]

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