Wednesday, October 19, 2016

My Trip to the Pacific Northwest- Part 3

My favourite- the Italian garden at The Butchart Gardens
My final installment! Today I will take you on a pictorial tour of my stay in Victoria and my day at The Butchart Gardens.  The crossing was rough, and quite cold - but well worth it. As soon as we arrived in Victoria the weather was sunny and balmy!
We stayed in the garden suite at a very nice inn located in a quiet residential neighborhood.
This is another inn down the street-maybe next time? The roses were fantastic!
The house across the street from our garden suite. Love the colors! Not unusual in this lovely neighborhood. Victoria is such a colourful place.

 Horses and carriages went by our windows all day (at least when we were there for rest breaks!).
A wild peacock in the parking lot at our inn! I talked to a neighbor who said that he has been living in the neighborhood for years! Evidently not uncommon here. I used to see wild peacocks growing up in New Orleans not far from Audubon Park- this is a very unusual climate!

Victoria-James Bay   


James Bay area  

Beautiful Butchart Gardens! Just as lovely as I expected. I have been reading about this garden for years. The roses were fantastic! And I was happy to see bees and butterflies throughout the gardens.


More photos now of the Italian Garden-there is even a place to enjoy some gelato!
Definitely my favorite of the gardens!
I had so much fun riding a rose-bedecked white horse on the famous Rose Carousel! For some reason there were more on-lookers than riders...
Banana tress, palm trees and Pacific Northwest evergreens all growing together! These are mature growing in the ground trees! What a fantastic climate!

I had so much fun on my break. I have more photos, and they may come in handy for other blogs.
Thank you so much for looking at my blog . I am loving the comments! Please keep them coming. I really do want to know what you enjoy seeing here and/or reading. I also welcome emails and pm's on Facebook if you are too shy to post. You might  also enjoy my Pinterest boards :
https://www.pinterest.com/colleen2322/
See you next week.



8 comments:

annabanana1987 said...

Lovely as always :) The gardens really looked fantastic!! It seemed you had such a nice trip and I enjoyed seeing all parts of it here on your blog. You took a lot of great photos! The Pacific Northwest is by far one of my favorite places on the Earth. I find that my soul is happy whenever I'm there :-D

colleen said...

Perhaps someday we will lead a retreat in the Pacific Northwest, Anna. It would be fun to work together- we love so many of the same things and we love to travel and we are just different enough to make a good team. Just a thought...

Barbara said...

I love all your photos and agree with you the roses outside ‘Rosewood’ are fantastic. I would love to stay in any of those beautiful inns and would also enjoy visiting Butchart Gardens and taking a ride on the Carousel!

colleen said...

You will LOVE the Carousel, Barbara! Riding on it made me feel like a happy child. It was fun to take the photos. I love this about blogs- so many of us sharing our beautiful photos which reflect our beautiful lives. Thank you for enjoying my blog!

Barbara said...

I really do enjoy your blog Colleen and always look forward to coming over to see what you have been up to. I went on several carousels at Disneyland Paris last December, Terry was far to shy to try it - but not me!

colleen said...

Barbara! I knew it! Another thing we have in common- a love of carousels. Why am I not surprised????

Anonymous said...

Such beautiful pictures! It's rather chilly right now as I read your post and the bright flowers and lush lawns look SO inviting. Thanks for sharing your adventures!

colleen said...

Marcia, you would LOVE Victoria! It is mild year round. You might not want to take a ferry to get there, though. The crossings can be quite rough! I had a rough crossing over, but a lovely ,sunny, smooth crossing back. You never know with water... Thank you so much for reading and commenting!