THE BEST IS YET TO COME...

Sunday, August 25, 2013

Sat, Aug 24:

Alaska Cruise: Norwegian Jewel: Up at 5:00 this morning after very little sleep. Mike started having severe pains in the groin yesterday and we ended up going down to the medical facility on board ship. Actually, he started having the pains while we were at Butchart Gardens. I ended up calling a cab to take us back to the ship. He thought the pains would go away but they didn’t, so down to the medical facility we went. I was very impressed with the medical staff. We didn’t go down until around 9:00 at night. The doctor/surgeon on duty knew exactly what it was. He had a hernia pop out. They sedated him and pushed it back in. The thing is, part of his intestines or bowel is pushing out through this thing. He needs to have surgery ASAP. We have at least 7 days of driving ahead of us. I’ll be doing most of that. And all the heavy lifting. I can handle that (I hope). We didn’t get back to our room until around 11:00. We still had to pack and put our bags outside our room for pick-up at midnight. Got my stuff packed before we went down to medical. I packed most of Mike’s stuff and put our priority luggage tags on everything and set it all outside. We went down for breakfast at 6:00 and then met John, our Concierge, on deck 7. We had priority status so John got us off the ship early with the other priority guests. Got through customs and our luggage was all there waiting for us. Got a porter to carry our bags to the curb and then a taxi sped us back to our park. Unpacked everything and then went to do the laundry. Had that done by around 9:30 and then went to the grocery store. Got everything out of the way, fueled up the truck and then relaxed the rest of the day. We were both pretty tired and Mike still not feeling great.

Victoria and Butchart Gardens: The Butcharts came to Vancouver Island for the limestone deposits and started a limestone quarry for cement production. They built their home close to the quarry and Jenny Butchart was always upset at what this quarry was doing to the land. So, after the quarry was abandoned, she started a garden. This she would call her sunken garden. The quarry walls were covered in all kinds of climbing plants and she had tons of soil brought in for the floor of the garden. It is the centerpiece of the garden today. They then added a rose garden, Italian garden, and Japanese garden. It is truly beautiful.

And I really loved the city of Victoria. Not too big—population around 80,000—it is called the city of gardens. And it really lives up to that name. From private homes to city parks, there are flowers everywhere. I loved the architecture and the city seemed really clean. Apparently, the climate is very moderate. They get almost no snow, little rain compared to, say, Seattle, and no extreme temperatures. I could picture living there. Except, it is on an island. Would have liked to experience more of Victoria for sure.