Beautiful British Columbia!

 For Jon's mom's birthday, she and Terry came up north to enjoy her birthday and her spring break in Sidney and Victoria B.C.  They came up late Saturday night, when we attempted (a couple of times) to beat a cooperative game called Pandemic.  Unsuccessfully.  Better luck at beating the diseases next time.






Sunday morning we got up bright and early to catch the only ferry out of Anacortes to Sidney for the day.  Gromit's first international trip, yea!
After a quick stop in Friday Harbor, we continued on our ferry ride, which lasted about 3 hours total. After arriving, we headed to a local garden and were amazed at how much of their stuff was blooming so far north already!

After admiring the gardens for a while, we headed to our (pet friendly!) hotel to check in and figure out our next plan of action.  We decided to head to Beacon Hill park.  It was a pretty awesome place.  Lots of ducks and geese and ponds and walking trails, as well as a whole slew of (noisy) resident peacocks, and a petting zoo.  Parts of it were groomed, park like trails, but as you headed further down, to the base of the island, it was more wild and rugged where the water was. 

 Afterwards we headed to downtown for Spaghetti Factory! It was so nice to enjoy some good American Italian dining (of which we have none near us).  We wandered around some shops after dinner, but unfortunately a lot of them closed pretty early.  Still, we had to walk off all that bread and pasta and spimoni!  We went back to the hotel to relax and place some games and wait for it to get dark, and then headed back out briefly to take some pictures of the harbor and parliament buildings all lit up. 

  The weather actually cooperated with us quite nicely that day.  Every time we were driving or on the ferry it was raining, and whever we got out of the car to do something it would stop raining.  As we would start heading back to the car, it'd start raining again. 









Anyway, the next day we slept in a bit and relaxed, went to a few more shops, and then headed home!  We briefly stopped in a park in Anacortes to give Gromit a break after all that sitting around while traveling, but then we parted ways.  Good overseas weekend :)