Today we just basically wandered around Victoria, which is a beautiful and fascinating town. And by wandered around, I mean that we walked. A lot. A LOT.

After walking past the parliament buildings

we started off toward Ogden Point (which is the breakwater point where a cool little lighthouse sits). So here’s a bunch of pictures from that.

I don’t know if you can tell or not from this picture, but you can actually see the Olympic Mountains in Washington across the bay from Victoria.

There was a weird house like structure on the beach, so we had to go check it out.

Victoria also apparently has a large satanic cult population,which seemed odd, so we just assumed this house was some sort of ritual site. And we mocked it accordingly.

Ryan’s really good at skipping stones. Jacqui and I, not so much.

So then we headed off to the inner harbor, which was filled with lots of vendors and entertainers, though the only entertainer when we first went down was a guy playing acoustic guitar, butchering old folk songs. If that guy made any money at all, then my dad could have made a fortune down there.

However, after hanging out for a little bit, watching various craft makers do their thing (Jessie‘s dissertation will elaborate on that far more), a real street performer came out to do some juggling. With torches. And of all the audience participants he could have picked, wouldn’t you know it, he picked me.

So he juggled torches on top of an upside down skateboard, on top of a wooden tube, on top of a board, on top of keyboard stands. Not bad.

We then continued to wander around the city, getting ice cream and catching various buses and whatnot. At one point, we wandered through a park that I don’t remember the name of, where there was a petting zoo, and I got this picture.

Finally we did get back to Jacqui’s sister’s place, which we promptly left to head back out for dinner. While sitting at dinner I witnessed the most amazing rainbow I’ve ever seen. Ryan and I went out and stared in awe. It was the first time I’ve ever seen a full rainbow. The whole thing. I was blown away. Go figure the two Victoria residents that were with us didn’t even bat an eye. And also go figure that it was the one time that day that I was camera-less. That would have easily been the coolest picture I would have taken yet. Darnit.

One side story I haven’t mentioned yet is that I’ve been searching for a Canada visor since getting here, and have been amazingly unsuccessful. We’ve even been into two specific hat shops, and no luck. I’ve also realized that there are far fewer hats that look cool on me than I wish there were. So I guess I’ll stick with the visor search.

On to day 6.