We woke up really early for our ride to Victoria on the Victoria Clipper. It left at 7:30 am, so we had to be there at 6:30 am. We woke up around 5:15 am to meet Troy's parents and catch the bus to get down to Pier 69. We finally boarded and were served a decent continental breakfast which included yogurt or cereal with milk, a blueberry muffin, a small cheese wheel, crackers, and Craisins. Thankfully the weather was decent, although not totally clear. We couldn't see any of the mountains that I knew surrounded us, but at least it was partly sunny and wasn't raining.

We arrived in Victoria around 10:30 and it took forever to get through immigration. We finally got onto our tour bus around 11 and had a short tour of the city before heading to the Butchart Gardens. We happened to be there on Victoria Day, so there were lots of festivities and a parade going on near the waterfront, so the tour bus had to avoid that area unfortunately. It didn't take long to get to the gardens though. We had about two hours to meander through looking at tons and tons of nicely landscaped scrubs, bushes, and flower patches. There were tulips everywhere. At the end we stopped in the gift shop and I actually bought some souvenirs, which I don't normally do on trips. The Butchart Gardens were pretty impressive. I could have stayed there another couple of hours probably.

The tour bus dropped us off at our hotel, the Royal Scot, which is just a block away from the waterfront. It was a nice hotel, despite being a little dated. We quickly headed out again and were pretty hungry, so we went to a place I'd read about called Red Fish Blue Fish. The line to order was intimidatingly long, but we waited anyway... and waited... and waited. After about 45 minutes, we finally ordered and got our food about 15 minutes later. Troy and I shared the 2 piece halibut and chips (for $20) and it was awesome. I can't say it was worth the wait, but it came close.

After that we walked through Chinatown and the big retail area. Troy and I continued on to Beacon Hill Park while his parents took a little rest at the hotel. I enjoyed walking through the park and sitting on a bench to rest for a while. We eventually found the Mile 0 marker for the Trans-Canada Highway, which is almost a 5,000 mile long highway that stretches all across Canada to the Atlantic Ocean.

We were a little hungry by then, so we stopped for an ice cream sundae at The Soda Shoppe on Government Street. We got a scoop of cookies & cream, strawberry, and chocolate, topped with marshmallow cream, whipped cream, pecans, and two cherries. It was a little overpriced (as was pretty much everything in Victoria), but it was nice to rest a bit and the sundae actually was very good.

After that we were pretty tired, so we headed back to the hotel and played a few games of pool and shuffleboard with Troy's parents before calling it a night.

We were happy to spend time with my parents last weekend on their second visit to Seattle. They arrived last Saturday and we spent some time in town before visiting Leavenworth and then visiting Victoria.

They arrived around lunch time, so we went to Red Mill, our favorite burger place in town. While the music was rather loud this time, the food was good as usual. From there, we headed to Pioneer Square to walk around and take the Underground Tour. This was Lesley's and my third time to take the Underground Tour. Each tour guide has his or her own stories to tell and different areas to show so it hasn't gotten old yet. We also spent a good amount of time at the Gold Rush Museum, which is a rather interesting and well-done museum.

We then visited the Central Library, which is an interesting architectural landmark. We visited the red floor and traveled along the lime green escalators before going to our apartment. There, we ordered Pagliacci Pizza and watched our Netflix rental (The Verdict) together before taking my parents back to their hotel for the evening.

The next day, we met for breakfast near their hotel before heading to Leavenworth. We rented a car for a more comfortable ride for everyone and then made the 2+ hour scenic drive over the mountains to the Bavarian village east of the Cascades. We enjoyed the town and had German food for lunch before heading back and visiting Bellevue Square. That evening we had apple pie that Lesley made and had a light taco dinner at a place called Tacos Guaymas in our neighborhood.

The next couple days we visited Victoria, British Columbia, which we'll write about separately. I'm happy my parents were able to come and really enjoyed visiting with them.

We went to the annual cheese festival at Pike Place Market on Saturday. The weather was amazing all day with highs in the lower 60s and mostly sunny skies. We met some friends from church there and walked around sampling all the different cheeses. It seemed like there were fewer stands this year than prior years, but there were still plenty to choose from. I generally like milder softer cheeses and Troy likes the stronger harder cheeses. We each got a cheese we wanted and we also bought a wedge of Cougar Gold, which we buy every year. I got a cream cheese from Sierra Nevada Creamery that I also bought last year and Troy got a Fontina cheese from Oregon. There were so many different kinds I liked, but we knew we had to limit ourselves.

While at the market, we also bought some flowers and some really good Taylor's Gold pears. We also browsed through a Spanish store that had a huge selection of wines from Spain, Argentina, Portugal, and several other countries. After that we went to our friends' apartment, which is just down the street from the market and hung out for a while. We played Super Mario Brothers Wii for an hour or so. We also enjoyed looking out their windows at the amazing view of Elliott Bay and had a chance to see some of the tugboats out there for the Maritime Festival.

After a while we were a little hungry for lunch, so we decided to head down to the waterfront for a Chowder cookoff, which is part of the Maritime Festival. After trying clam chowder at 7 different restaurants, we all decided that Anthony's had the best. It wasn't too thick or thin, wasn't too buttery or peppery, it was just right. I think it will be a while before I want to have chowder again.

Once we got home, we took the car to get its annual washing and vacuuming in preparation for our visitors that are coming soon. Now it almost looks like a brand new car with a nice dark green paint job. Then we watched the Sounders-Timbers game, which ended in a tie unfortunately.

It was nice to hang out with some friends and have a chance to enjoy the nice weather on Saturday.

Not much has been going on that's been post worthy, but I thought I would mention a few things coming up over the next few months:

7th Annual Cheese Festival - We're going to the cheese festival today and might be meeting some friends there. It's free to get in and all the booths have free samples of their cheeses to taste. We're planning on buying two or three different kinds of cheese. I've been looking forward to this for months.

Visitors - Troy's parents are visiting us very soon and we're planning on going to Leavenworth, WA and Victoria, British Columbia. We've never been to Victoria, but I've heard a lot of good things about it, especially the Butchart Gardens. They'll also get to see our new apartment and neighborhood.

Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) - Seattle has one of the best film festivals in the country. We've gone to a couple movies every year during the month-long event. Not sure what we'll see this year, but there's tons of options to choose from.

Northwest Folklife Festival - This happens on Memorial Day weekend at the Seattle Center. Lots of good food is available, as well as crafts, live music, and other things going on.

Mariners game - We'll be going to the Memorial Day game against the Orioles. We haven't been to a baseball game yet this season, so it should be fun. Hopefully the weather is much nicer by then.

Sounders-Whitecaps game - We'll be going to the first regular season match between the Sounders and the Whitecaps on June 11. The Sounders, Portland Timbers, and Vancouver Whitecaps will probably form a strong rivalry due to their close proximity to each other in the region.

More visitors - My parents and Uncle will be visiting us in mid-June for about 5 days. We're planning on going to a Mariners game and also scenic Deception Pass. I'm really looking forward to hanging out with them and showing them our apartment.

Bite of Seattle - This is probably my favorite Seattle festival. Last year we were able to go with our visiting friends and had a lot of fun. It's similar to Folklife, except even more restaurants and types of food to choose from. We'll be going to this in mid-July.

Hiking? - Hopefully we'll start hiking more as the weather gets better. We've had a really cold, wet spring so far, with high temperatures well below normal. My foot is also slowly improving, so it will be nice to hike again. Hopefully I won't have to wear my night splint forever.

So, we'll be pretty busy the next couple of months and it will be nice to have visitors. The summers are always the best time of the year in Seattle.

We posted recently about our favorite places for Latin American food and since then have been to another place called Laredo's. The ambiance in this place reminded me very much of Texas and the food was pretty good too. This was the closest to Tex-Mex that I've had here. The first important step to good Tex-Mex is good chips and salsa and Laredo's had that. We also had an avocado margarita, which is something I hadn't heard of before, but tasted pretty much like a regular margarita. I had some kind of taco dish and Lesley had enchiladas, both of which came with pinto beans and rice. Overall the food was pretty good and I'm looking forward to going back.

Our last day in San Francisco began with drizzly weather, very Seattle-like. Appropriately, Lesley and I started the day at Starbucks. We didn't really have any plans for the morning. We walked around Union Square and then took the streetcar down to the Ferry building. On the way back, we stopped at a cool toy store, and then went to the mall downtown.

Since we had to check out of our hotel, we dropped off our bags at our friend's apartment. Our friend wasn't feeling particularly well, so Lesley and I went to a sandwich shop in the Castro. It had apparently changed locations and the old address didn't show the new address, so it took us a little while to find it. We took our sandwiches to nearby Dolores Park and fortunately by this time the rain had stopped and the sky had started to clear up. It was still quite windy, so we had to keep our food from blowing away. Our sandwiches were pretty good.

After lunch, we walked to the Mission district. The weather by this time was beautifully sunny and the walk was very pleasant. We walked a ways down Mission St and our friend met up with us. We then took a bus over to the Noe Valley to walk around some more historic San Francisco homes. We had a very nice walk and then stopped for a drink before heading back in the direction of our friend's apartment. We had some frozen yogurt before getting our bags from our friend's apartment and saying goodbye. It was unfortunate that our friend had felt sick during the trip, but we still were able to have a good time together.

We took BART to the airport. Our plane was flying out of a new terminal, which had better food than typical airport fast food. We shared a tomato bisque soup, which was actually not bad, before heading back to Seattle.

One aspect of unfortunate timing was that both Lesley and our friend happened to be feeling a little sick during our visit. While we were still able to get out and do a lot of things, we had been taking things a little easy. Unfortunately, people wasn't feeling well enough to attend a Easter Sunday church service.

Later, Lesley and I did stroll through Chinatown as well as through North Beach. We found an Italian place for lunch in North Beach, though were hoping to be a little more impressed by the food.

After lunch, we took a couple buses to get to the upscale neighborhood of Nob Hill. San Francisco has a very good public transportation system and maps are posted at many of the bus stops, which helped us find our way around. Also, unlike Seattle, buses come very frequently, it seems like our average wait time for a bus was under 5 minutes.

We walked around Nob Hill, enjoying the upscale atmosphere. We ran across a classic car show near the Fairmont hotel. After that, we found the nearby Cable Car Museum, which was actually pretty interesting. The cable car system is operated by the motors in that building, which keep the cables moving at around 10 mph throughout the city. The museum also showed how the cable cars work and told the history of the cable cars. There used to be a lot more cable car lines operated by different companies, but the great fire of 1906 destroyed most of them. Later, the whole system was in danger of being scrapped in the name of progress, but was saved due to the work of citizen activists.

After this, we met up with our friend and his girlfriend at the grocery store to buy food for Easter dinner. Our friend's girlfriend made most of the food and we had a nice dinner with green beans, carrots, potatoes, and chicken.

We hung out at our friend's apartment the rest of the day and played some Mario Kart, then played Ticket to Ride again, as well as a game of Uno. This day was probably my favorite day of the trip thanks to the good weather and fun Lesley and I had, as well as the friendly Easter dinner we had.

Saturday morning we had a small bite to eat from the hotel continental breakfast and headed out to Golden Gate Park to see the Conservatory of Flowers. The current exhibit was called "Wicked Plants: Botanical Rogues and Assassins" and they had all kinds of poisonous or otherwise deadly plants such as poison ivy, the tobacco plant, and others. It was very interesting reading all the stories about each of the plants and how they killed people over the past 150 years. The rest of the conservatory was pretty cool too, with all kinds of weird looking leaves and flowers. We saw some lily pads that were probably 2 feet wide that were pretty cool.

We continued walking through Golden Gate Park and enjoyed the great weather. It was mostly sunny and in the 60s. After the park, we took the bus to the Golden Gate Bridge. It was really crowded, but once we got out onto the bridge the people thinned out. We walked about halfway across and were able to see pretty far in every direction. Last time we were here, it was foggy all around us and we couldn't hardly see anything. Going to the Golden Gate Bridge is probably my favorite thing to do in San Francisco.

It was about time for lunch, so we headed to Fisherman's Wharf by bus and ate at Boudin. Their sourdough bread bowls with clam chowder and tomato bisque soup were excellent. Not too far from there was a place called Musée Mécanique where they had all kinds of old arcade and carnival games. Some looked to be almost 100 years old. We played a few of them, including an Indiana Jones pinball machine.

We walked over to Ghirardelli Square next and ate an ice cream sundae called "The Cable Car" while sitting on a bench looking out to the bay. It had three scoops of ice cream - rocky road, vanilla chocolate chip, and chocolate - topped with whipped cream, nuts, hot fudge, a cherry, and a milk chocolate square bar. It was really good.

After that we walked along the pier and eventually made our way to the Embarcadero via a historic streetcar. AT&T Park where the Giants play wasn't too far away, so we decided to go check it out to see if there was anything new on or near the stadium about them being World Series champs. We actually showed up just after a game had ended, so the place was swarming with orange and black. We didn't hang around too long because of the crowds, so we headed on back to the hotel to rest a bit.

We wanted to go to an A's game since we'd already been to a Giants game the last time we came here. Unfortunately the A's were out of town - oddly enough playing in Seattle, so we didn't see any baseball games.

We ate dinner at a place our friend recommended that was really close to our hotel called Bangkok Noodles & Thai. After dinner we went to hang out with our friends and played a few games of Mario Kart. We also played two new games called Carcassonne and Quiddler.