My Weekly Adventures: The Calm Before the Storm

Welcome to the mid-April Weekly Adventures! Its a bit weird to call this the calm before the storm as we supposedly should have had a rain storm (there was a rainfall warning on The Weather Network) but it was a lot more mild than expected. Regardless, my meaning is that the first half of April was relatively calm but the second half of April is going to be crazy. I sometimes skip the month end April Adventures post because my life is going to be mostly work and more overtime work so just putting it out there in case, things get crazy. For now though, April was a little quiet, mostly because there weren’t any holidays and then nothing huge happened and I didn’t really do a whole lot of anything. Still, let’s see if I can rummage something to talk about. I will end with some little planning things I have set for myself in anticipation for some stuff down the line.

Restaurant ChuChai

I’m going to keep this short since I already did a small post on it before. ChuChai is a Thai vegan restaurant. It was a spontaneous visit to say the least while being in the area.

You can check out the entire Restaurant ChuChai post HERE.

Courses Thematiques Le Tour D’Horloge (& Old Montreal Stroll)

To be clear, my outdoor running season hasn’t started. I’ll talk about that at the end of the post. My friend’s that I help out has. This was a new one for him but it was a nice double race to start with a 5 km and 8 km. To be honest, I’m considering this one for next year, the 5km probably since its still early in the season and on the rare occasion, I’d have time to run in March. Either way, my friend did alright especially for the first outdoor races. However, I liked it mostly because I got to finally walk around during that time and take some nice pictures in Old Montreal. I work around the area but its not the same on a weekend morning or when its gloomy and stuff. The emptiness of it in some areas makes for some nice pictures. I only showed two with actual runners in the background. Talking about the race, the course looks pretty nice.

L’Instant at Casino De Montreal (again)

One of my friends are on a gaining casino points mission so its been all about taking advantage of the bonus points events so on the start of a gloomy weekend, we went out to have dinner. I finally got to try Fish & Chips there which was what I wanted to try last time but decided to choose the pasta instead. It was the special of the day and I don’t think its a permanent selection? I really don’t know the menu here at the L’Instant, the deli at the casino that well. Either way, it was pretty good. I only went to the casino to eat so it was pretty much in and out.

Upcoming Plans: Workout Plan

As the 2 months and one week countdown starts until my best friend’s wedding and I’m one of the bridesmaids, I need to lose some of my winter fat and get a little more in shape (at least to make sure that I can still get into the dress at the end of June. I have started walking the stairs to the office at our building and trying to not take the elevator. Its been  pretty nice. The project coming up is finding a cardio and weights workout schedule that I know that I can stick to and try to eat more healthier. I’d like to start clean eating again but I’m not sure that I’m totally ready for it. Either way, I’m going to gradually try to get back to a more balanced diet, more veggies probably. Gardening season also starts soon and weather is starting to be good for running so I’m looking forward to putting some outdoors activities in as well as in May, hiking starts. So, I’ll work it out accordingly. Especially going to try to add in using the park workout stations facilities to incorporate something different to the running path. I won’t do a segment specifically for workout (too many segments right now) but I will do some updates here. 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Adventures post!
Its been relatively calm lately and its nice since I’m enjoying the staying at home time.

Hopefully I keep up with posting (or getting things done in bulk beforehand) for the second half of April.

Hiking: Le Mont-Megantic Trail – Mont Megantic National Park

Hiking season has officially started for us this year!

The road to the national park

Monday was Victoria Day in Canada so it was a day off and we were able to figure out somewhere fun to hike. Our plans almost did change in the morning but things worked out and we headed off to the Eastern Townships in Quebec to Mont-Megantic National Park.

Its about 2.5 hour drive for us to get there. We always stop at the visitor’s center first. Essential when you are doing a hike to get the bathroom break and also to pay for the fee while getting info on the trails. The lady at the desk was a great help and gave us a good idea of what trails were around us while also telling us the original trail we were going to do was still covered in snow. Usually that wouldn’t be a problem but I haven’t gotten around to getting a new pair of hiking shoes so I was in my running turned walking shoes so the grip wasn’t as good. We ended up going for the Le Mont-Megantic Trail which is a 10 km loop and takes you up to the observatory at the top. The entrance here includes parking and the entrance code to go to the observatory and sanctuary up the hill by car. So, we actually stopped at the top of the trail just before the hill up the observatory which was muddy and snowy in various areas. The trail here is intermediate (although it felt hard for a first hike). Here’s a few pictures and the scenery! Trust me, its so worth it!

The start of the trail! Easy and beautiful with streams running along each side

Close up of the stream

More stream..because I love it

Rocky hills to climb..thank you hiking poles

And more and more snow as we go to the end of the trail

The view at the first lookout

The view at the first lookout

Driving to the Observatory

View at the Observatory

View at the Observatory

Sanctuary

A lovely trek but it was a little tough so the pictures were a little scarce for the path going up. Before I wrap this up, I’d love to share a video I posted on Instagram for the scenery at the Sanctuary since that is the top most part of the area and offered a 360 degree scenery almost.

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First #hike of 2018! #Exploring #parcnational #montmegantic in #estrie #easterntownships. #quebec #scenery #landscape #nature #trails

A post shared by Kim (@tranquildreams) on May 21, 2018 at 1:07pm PDT

There is a whole bunch of trails at this national park and we’re pretty sure that we’ll come back for some of the other ones later this season. Its a close enough drive and the Eastern Townships are pretty and the national park also has some space observation stuff that we’d love to check out when its not a statutory holiday and they are open.

Not sure when the next hike is but we’re planning on doing a lot more this year so I’ll probably be checking in with another trail that we’ve explored soon!

Vacation 2017 Day 4: On the Way Home!

The final day of vacation is here! Of course, only the trip portion as I still have one week of staycation afterwards, which turned out pretty great as I caught up with movies and TV series and a ton of chores that needed to be tended to. I managed to get some cooking done as well. Getting  ahead of myself again! What’s new, right?

Let’s go home!

The way home was pretty smooth. A few clouds and a few raindrops, nothing as intense as the first day. We ended doing a bit of the Acadian scenic route. Being Canada Day, there was a lot of Canada flags but there was also the Acadian flag which we didn’t know until we saw it. Its pretty impressive to see the Acadian settlements and how prominent they are, even after so many years. Its pretty amazing. I’m not a history major by far and I honestly have the worst memory for it. Still, the drive slowly went from that to looking again at creepy country houses and barns and formulating creeps in our head. Probably not the best thing to do but still. Between that and talking about home and games and working together with my husband on his first post for Game Warp, which is still in the making, it was a really nice drive home. Super long and stretched out, but also so very beautiful.

These pictures are after we crossed back over to the province of Quebec. We took a little bit of a shortcut from the originally planned route and it cut a little off the time of driving. We did do a lot of driving over the last few days and would like to get back sooner rather than later to just sit back and relax. We got to New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island and there are some fantastic scenery there. We head back into Quebec and every time we do these drives, we remember how big this province is and while we’ve traveled quite a bit of it, there is still so many places to explore and the road trips on Quebec roads may sometimes be boring but mostly, they are just so breathtaking that its something that everyone should try.

This wraps up the vacation recap! Like I probably mentioned before,I did have a week after that where I was on staycation and it was great because I managed to prepare for Montreal Comiccon, mentally, physically and with the blog and channel. I caught up with a lot of movies which I have ready to review when Fantasia Festival ends. July is a busy month for the recreational side of things like blog duties and event coverage, but also for actual work. 

That’s it for Day 4 of our vacation!
It was a long and calm drive back home with really not a lot of stops.
Its a lot of passing images as we drove by nice scenery.

Montreal Comiccon 2017: Cosplay & More!

Montreal Comiccon 2017 happened this past weekend. As I sorted things out after a very hectic and fun weekend, I kicked off the Montreal Comiccon recap with my shopping haul yesterday. You can check it out HERE if you missed it.

This year’s Montreal Comiccon is very special. Why? I actually stopped postponing and put aside my worry of rejection and applied for media pass for Game Warp Podcast and we got it. Game Warp and also my own first show going as Media. I have no idea how hard it is to get into Montreal Comiccon but regardless, I find that an achievement regardless. Its nice to see that we can take Game Warp Podcast and go out and cover the gaming portion of the show.

If you don’t follow That Moment In, here is the recap of Day 1 and Day 2 of Montreal Comiccon. It is very gaming heavy as I spent Day 1 chatting with game developers and trying out their games and Day 2 was spent in and out of gaming panels as well as checking out the Triple A Studio booths and their games.

However, Montreal Comiccon is more than just panels and games. It is a fan expo and there was all sorts of cool stuff everything. The most awesome thing was following the news of the actual size replica of Optimus Prime truck literally rolling into town to the showfloor and its great to finally find it right next to the autographs section, just like its listed as a guest.

Of course, there was Batmobile and Knight Rider and all sorts of other cars hanging out in different booths. There was even a charity photo op by an artist who made a Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. It looked fantastic but no pictures unless you wanted a picture with it. I love Toothless but I also had to get somewhere by the time I found it so didn’t end up not being able to show that off at all.

Aside from that, its all about the awesome cosplay everything. Day 1 found these cosplays that stood out to me:

Michael Myers

Arrow

TinTin

Spiderman

I honestly didn’t have too much time on Day 1 as I was frantically trying to check out as many games in the Indie Game Zone as possible. It was a rather successful to me. With that said, it left me time to fight with the crowd on Saturday in between panels to catch more pictures of cosplayers and their many different creative outfits.

Cruella de Vil & Evil Queen

Princess Peach

Luigi

Ace Ventura

IT

IT

Overwatch character

Overwatch character

Fallout 4

Beauty & the Beast & Jack Sparrow

Michael Myers

Harley Quinn

The 100

Spiderman

There’s a ton to do at Montreal Comiccon all the time and this year, the guests were pretty impressive. Between walking through the Artist Alley and vendors to find a Pikachu for my friend’s toddler. I tried keep it mostly about gaming as I’m there as media for that. Its kind of different. I’m sure anyone who does media at events might feel the same way. Its still a ton of fun but there’s also that responsibility that I know I’ll have to report on it so there’s this extra push and motivation to make sure I get to panels and cover the things that would match up with what we represent which is games since I’m there for Game Warp Podcast.

It was a great weekend! Tons of fun!
It took Sunday to recuperate but totally worth every minute of it! 🙂

Vacation 2017 Day 3: Prince Edward Island Drive

And we continue our journey of Day 3 recap of our Vacation 2017.

Today’s itinerary includes mostly a drive around Prince Edward Island. One of my husband’s request for the trip was to cross the Confederation Bridge so that’s what we are doing today. Hopefully, we’ll manage to get a hike in and see some nice scenery. We had a sudden change in our plans halfway through the day as we stopped for lunch to meet up with one of my good friends currently undergoing training in Charlottetown, which was pretty cool.

Let’s see Day 3!

Shediac, New Brunswick
World’s Largest Lobster

In the words of my fantastic Game Warp Podcast cohost when I sent this picture to him, he wondered why and who thinks of these things. But then, why not, right? The Atlantic Canada is known for their seafood and PEI for their lobsters. I visited this when I was 12 probably (or younger) and it doesn’t look as menacingly large anymore although still very sizable.

Crossing the Confederation Bridge to PEI

We had a gloomy morning heading into Prince Edward Island. What can we do, right? Breakfast was included at the Days Inn in Moncton so that was pretty awesome. It took one headache off our hands and gave us time to hit the road faster and cross bridge which takes over 10 minutes to cross, I think. The speed can’t be too fast and its about 13kms long.

Lots of Lighthouses Along the Way

Not weird for an island to have plenty of lighthouses and Prince Edward Island had a whole lot. We obviously didn’t stop at all of them, because we are under a time crunch, much more than we even imagined. You’ll see… However, these lighthouses are different just from where they are located and how they are taken care of really seems like they have their own story behind each one.

Port-La-Joye-Fort Amherst

 

A last minute decision to turn into this National Historic Site to check it out! Port-La-Joye-Fort Amherst is a pretty location. It has several walking trails spanning out of the main trail. There is some history to learn from this land during war and still seeing a part of the formation/trenches. It was a gloomy day and the rain was going to hit any time so we did the main trail, took a general look around, borrowed their washrooms before getting back on the road.

Lunch at Charlottetown

This trip has marked both a lunch and a dinner experience at two different Swiss Chalet restaurants. Funny, because both of us haven’t eaten there before and we wanted to see how it was. The dinner in Moncton wasn’t so good but this lunch at Charlottetown was much better. A nice and relaxing meal to catch up with our friend about what is going on and his upcoming plans.

Prince Edward Island National Park

Cavendish Beach

Green Gables House

Prince Edward Island National Park spans over the top part of the island with three areas to visit. We visit maybe two of the areas as we drove along the scenic routes. The highlight is to visit Green Gables House and the Cavendish Beach’s sand dunes. Our little last minute detour did cost us more time than anticipated however we did see these beautiful sceneries, plus at two parts, we actually saw a fox. You see one of them here, right in the middle of the road. It did break my heart a little to see it so skinny. I think it was looking for food which we don’t have and I don’t believe we should give food to wildlife anyways.

This was the final stop before exiting the National Park. For us, it was getting late and we still had to get to Summerside and exit the island and head further up to our next hotel. At this point, we were certain that we were immensely behind schedule.

Dinner at Summerside, PEI: Five Eleven West

Five Eleven West was the best meal on our trip. While we were behind schedule, we still took time to relax for a nice meal and just enjoy ourselves. My husband loved the burger, and I was pretty happy with my mussels. However, the show stopper here is the sweet potato fries. They were awesomely delicious.

Last stretch to Miramichi, New Brunswick

Sunset

Confederation Bridge from afar

Crossing back to New Brunswick on Confederation Bridge

We ended up getting to Days Inn Miramichi past 10pm. It wasn’t bad but we pretty much got to showering and resting right away as we have a long day on the final day and pretty much our trip back home for another 9 hours. And we do recommend Day Inn Miramichi if you ever decide to go there. Really nice service, the rooms are comfortable and spacious and breakfast is included.

That wraps up Day 3 of Vacation! Time sure does fly when you’re having fun! 🙂

Have you been to Prince Edward Island?
Did you visit the red sand beaches and the sand dunes or even Green Gables House?

My Weekly Adventures #39: Upcoming Projects & More…

2017 has been incredibly busy so far!! We’re already halfway done with March. Can you believe it? That means in two weeks or so, I’ll be officially in my thirties, the 3-1. Honestly, entering 30 hasn’t really changed anything much except coming to terms that I now can’t tolerate as much alcohol as I used to. Which isn’t a problem since I drink a glass of wine like 3 days in a month, unless its holiday seasons or some special event.  Being 30 only seemed to fuel this additional motivation to do the things I’ve wanted to and just not care so much and do it. Point is, it seems getting older has given myself some more courage and clarity about what I’m doing and life and all that stuff.

Running off on a tangent apparently is still something that I haven’t changed. Getting back on track! Let’s check out these last two busy busy weeks!

Ultimate 90’s Blogathon Done!

Ultimate 90’s Blogathon hosted by myself and Drew over at Drew’s Movie Reviews drew to close a few days ago. If you missed any of the reviews, you can find them all on this page HERE. We’ve already expressed our gratitude in the conclusion post but yet again, thank you to all for the participation, comments and likes. It does feel great to know that there’s so much love for our little blogathon. We’ve met new friends and bloggers and it was a lot of fun. We are hoping to do something similar next year and for those who missed out (and a few of you have reached out to us about it), we will keep you in our hearts and minds and maybe we’ll have you all on board as well if all goes well. Of course, a big thank you goes to my darling co-host Drew which I don’t think I ever express thanks to him enough. Remember to head over to check out Drew’s Movie Reviews if you haven’t already right here.

New Online Courses

 I wrapped up my last course a week or so ago. It was pretty good and a lot of fun. I had already learned a bit of the foundation so it was really polishing up those skills and I realized that I was reminded why I chose to  not major in this in university. Funny how some things just never change, right? I did pretty well in my final exam so yay!

Last time, I did mention that I was debating on courses so I decided to be ambitious and took both the photography and guitar course. Does that sound a little crazy? Maybe. I never know anymore. I just follow my instinct. If you are newer here, then you probably didn’t quite get to experience the whole photography days here which is moved over to my other blog, Avenue of Daydreams. I have been playing around with photography for a while but its been a while that I’ve felt like I need to learn more about the foundation of photography so that I can use my DSLR with much more ease. The main thing is that while I know of the terms like shutter speed and aperture and the idea of what effect they have but how to set the numbers on the camera are all a blur. Pairing guitar with photography seems to be good because it shouldn’t be incredibly hard.

We’re in the second week of the course now and let me tell you, photography is pretty cool and exactly what I expected as that its helpful but never  too hard because I already know a part of it. However, guitar is a whole other story. I’m definitely picking up more than when I ambitiously tried to learn on my own but I play the piano so my hands don’t work the same way and fretting hurts so much. I am working hard to get in some practice everyday from what I’ve learned to hopefully get the basics down. Guitars are a little huge for myself. Its why I’m starting to convince my husband to learn it instead. 😉

I’ll report back with more news later on. I’ll be approaching the end of the course by the next weekly adventures.

Hangout with Friends

Living in a city where winter is so prominent makes it hard to do much during these cold winter weeks. The last two weeks definitely beat us down with some dry cold weather that just urged us to stay in unless absolutely necessary, like going to work. As I’m typing this post up, its now milder but in a snow storm. I’m just hoping this is the last leg of winter and we’ll be seeing some lovely spring weather soon. Of course, this doesn’t stop us from going out. On a Friday night, I went to hang out with Starry Traveler and we chatted about a ton of stuff and finalized some details on our new segment that I’ll talk about in the next section.

The week after that was the day of our actual segment in the works. Maybe one day I’ll get something going for it more as we work out a little more on how this will work in the long-run. The hope is that it will keep going on. So we even had the husbands join in along with two more friends. We’re pretty much the foodie group now that heads out to these food events in Montreal together. Fun times! To clarify the picture, we only managed to set up the game before my friend’s baby tried to grab everything and we decided that this game is for a babyless night. Not sure when that will happen, or at least when baby or toddler is more grown up.

Two New Projects/Segments

Project #1: Battle of Ingredients

Next week will launch the first instalment of Battle of Ingredients, featuring myself and my awesome childhood friend and casual blogger, Phoebe from Starry Traveler’s Road. We’ve been brainstorming this one for a good few months (if not a year) and finally decided to just do it. I’ll explain a little more on how it works but the goal here is that we pick one or two ingredients to compose a meal. We usually grab some friends and our husbands to sit down for a lovely gathering and they can then give us feedback. The key is not really to see who wins out of this but rather to inspire some new recipes and hopefully explore what is in season. We hope to start this off as a monthly segment due to preparation and getting everyone together. For the first battle, we chose two ingredients that are very common however, it is what is in season for us (at least one of them is). However, its not always going to be battles and sometimes just a team-up.

Project #2: All About Adaptations

Launching this week (if tonight’s recording goes well) is All About Adaptations. The idea of talking about adaptations was actually one of the first reasons why I started movie blogging unfortunately nothing ever happened. However, when Movie Reviews 101 and MovieRob had their Stephen King Blogathon, I did an entry that really made me think about this idea harder and finally, after something like two years, I’ve decided that I’m ready to do this. The idea of this is that any adaptation can fall into this category and compare it to source material. If there are many adaptations, I will try to look at as much as I have access to. Because there is much more preparation, I’m not quite sure about the frequency but I already have two ready for recording. With that said, this is going to be a YouTube segment. I’m slowly transforming the channel to focus on Movie, Gameplay & Unboxing. Hopefully you can join me over there! More details on the launch post. 🙂

Gaming Reviews Update!

Would you look at that? The latest project this week was putting together our video Game Reviews. Obviously the choice to read the written review is still there but for those of you that want to kick back and just listen to the review while watching some gameplay, we now offer you that option! Hope you enjoy it! 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• Toronto Comicon
• All About Adaptations #1
• Battle of Ingredients #1
• Various Movie Reviews

The Progression of the Ongoing Snowstorm…

Today, I feel a need to take a slight detour from normal programming to show you all the monster snowstorm that we haven’t seen in quite a while. Talk about winter going out in full-on style.

Here’s last evening when I left work. Thanks to changing our clocks the weekend before, there is still light.

Here’s when I finally made it back near my place.

Last night we shoveled the driveway once and I didn’t capture any of it. But this is what we woke up to…and theres my husband shoveling and you can’t see but our darling neighbor eventually lent us his snowblower to get rid of the few feet of snow we had.

And now..back to that (almost) same shot when I left work but this morning getting back to the office…

The storm is still going on right now so I’m not exactly sure when it is supposed to stop. I heard it should some time today.

Were you hit with this storm?

An Official Welcome to Avenue of Daydreams!

I’ve never openly pushed my other blog over here but I’m rather proud of setting up a second blog that has a more creative focus than the one here that’s hopefully building into something more of a reviews and lifestyle sort of blog. Changes are in the midst here (as I’ve mentioned a few times before) but if creative writing and photography is something you like, head on over and check out what I’m up to. There are some posts from before this official revamp but its something I wanted to do to change a clunky name like Days Nights and Daydreams but also to give a broader aspect to it than just creative writing which was getting a little heavy.

Thanks and hope you are all having a fabulous Saturday! 🙂

Avenue of Daydreams

A HUGE WELCOME!!

1. to the revamped Days Nights and Daydreams
2. We are now called Avenue of Daydreams officially
3. If you were checking out a past link, you shouldn’t have a problem being automatically redirected over here.

It took a little more time than anticipated.  That is mostly because I couldn’t decide what to keep and leave as a partnership with my main blog, Tranquil Dreams. There are changes coming up over there as well! However, lets not make the partnership too obvious 😉

Avenue of Daydreams is its own place! We are officially the creative outlet. This is the world of scribbles and words and snapshots!

We’re starting off with 3 posts a week.  That seems pretty simple and doable.

What’s going to happen here? We have 3 segments. Two is just picking up from before and there is one just recently thought up on my part.  As most…

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End of Cruise & Last Day in Seattle!

The Alaska Cruise lands on the Day 10 where basically its breakfast and scurrying off the boat with our luggage. We had packed light so we just needed to carry everything in one shot without having to wait.

We took a final walk around the ship before leaving and took a lovely farewell shot of Seattle.

Our only stop scheduled before our evening flight back home was to the Museum of Glass.  Remember where I went to the Chihuly Garden and Glass on the day before boarding the cruise ship HERE? Well, this is where all the art work happens.  Its supposed to be a highlight location.  At a certain time, they open for the workshop to show how they make certain pieces of art.  We sat there for a good bit of time looking at them craft a whale tail and this other piece which I can’t even remember what it was.

The rest of the museum featured works from certain programs they have.  One of them was for kids creative pieces that they adapted into these glass works. And there were other art designs and forms from Mr. Chihuly himself.  It was a colorful adventure to say the least.

The Museum of Glass is a little dark so a lot of pictures didn’t turn out great.  Here are the selected ones that were rather decent. Its some nice work.  Some are rather abstract but I think the glass designs are really beautiful and intricate. The detail on them is just amazing.

Onward to the airport and heading home afterwards.  We took a little plane what some would call air taxi over to Vancouver and had  a little layover before heading back home to Montreal on a red eye flight.  I’m not a huge fan of red eye flights and I think I did get a few movies watched as well but I did catch a shut eye for two hours or so.  At least I had a few days off when I got home so as usual, I would just pass out from minor jet lag and just the adrenaline rush of vacation leaving my system and getting back to my normal life 😉

Recap on the first cruise

Cruises are really fun.  I’m not going to lie though.  The first two to three days of the cruise were so tough. It was being trapped in a boat with my mom and her elderly friends.  They are super nice but would also feel a lack of freedom until I found a way to just walk off and do my own thing.  However, as the cruise went by and a certain routine set in, it was really fun to board and see a lovely city and explore, take pictures and all that great stuff.  The cruise helped instill some good habits because of the boredom and the evenings were always something I’d look forward to because there were shows and events and music.  The food was also pretty decent even in the buffet, it had really great choices.  The free dining options were very accommodating and that is always a plus.  There is a feeling of being pampered on a cruise.  Someone cooks and cleans for you.  Its uber relaxed and there’s just so much time to lounge around.  That is good and bad.  For the most part, I didn’t have to make any decisions and it was just all set out and eventually that was very nice.  It may have taken me a few days to adapt to the cruise life but there is no doubt that at the end of it, I did miss it quite a bit.  Reality is awesome, being home is great but feeling relaxed and pampered and being able to have time to do everything I wanted, have a night life, meet new people also was really fun.  That’s the great thing about vacation, right?  That is why I love it so much.  If it was my everyday, it would sound good but I’m guessing I’d probably grow tired of it.  Cruising is a good way to travel and its definitely something that should be experienced.  It definitely has its perks. However, there is no doubt that when the bill came in, being on a cruise is a luxurious way to travel. Everything is pretty pricey and there’s the daily service fee charges and while its all inclusive, many activities do cost money, especially shore excursions.  Plus, next time I’d get a beverage package because that would be more cost efficient as well.  You pay with a swipe of your room key and your life is basically  there for whatever days you have the trip. Still, I’d do another cruise if I had the money 😉

Have you gone a cruise before? Did you enjoy your experience? 

Alaska Cruise on Norwegian Jewel [Day 8&9]: At Sea and Victoria, Canada

We’re nearing the end of the cruise here.  Victoria is the last stop before we board back in Seattle and have a half day before our flight to wander around.

Day 8 At Sea

Day 8 was back on the boat.  The night before all the way to mid day of Day 8 at sea, the tides were ridiculous.  The ship rocked like crazy. I didn’t end up eating a lot for breakfast or lunch but still more than the previous days since not eating is not really something that lasts too long.  Especially since I was working out a whole lot along with a lot of walking during the shore excursions and around the boat to fill up time. Day 8 at sea was the final bit.  It was the goodbyes because some people departed in Victoria (mostly Canadians living on the West coast) and there was a ton of farewells at dinner and for the last show.  During the day, I enjoyed some of the nice weather and did one more time of the hot tubs and went to workout two times.  I remember those days since I rarely do that back at home 😉 Oh and to not focus on the rocking ship in the morning, we played a bit of mahjong. I was literally tracked down at the gym at the beginning of my workout and asked to join in their mahjong game. It was kind of funny.

We had our last dinner on the cruise over at the Tsar’s Palace.

My mom and I also dressed up a little so that we could take some pictures with the professional photographers to keep some memories. Unfortunately, I think there’s like some copyright thing that I can’t post that up or whatever so just to be safe, I’ll keep it for my own decoration. We did take some nice pictures around the ship.

Day 9 Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

This trip seems a whole lot going in and out of Canada and then finally landing back home in Canada of course. It was one of the things that had us baffled with all the going in and out of borders of what to put on our customs papers when we were leaving.  Either way, I’ve been to Victoria before on a bus tour with my mom back in 2009 (or so). This time, I really wanted to meet up with one of my friends who moved out here.  Crazy thing is that my phone’s battery decided to die on that same day.  When we landed, I frantically went searching for a Fido store but I own a Samsung Galaxy S3 so of course, no replacement batteries anymore since everyone’s using the S4 or S5.  I did manage to write down her number before the phone died completely and borrowed the phone there. Stressful and crazy, yes. At least, the phone worked when it was on charge so I was able to contact the fiance when I got to the airport the next day give him the landing info again. But, we’re not there yet.

I did meet up with my friend and her and her husband took us to Butchart Gardens for a nice walk to see the different flowers of ending of Spring heading  almost into summer flowers.  If you haven’t been to Butchart Gardens, that place is gorgeous.  We were in between seasons and the flowers were great but still, its designed so well.

We had dinner afterwards at the Victoria harbor area at this cute little restaurant called The Flying Otter Grill. That place had great service and some really good food. It also felt good to not be eating on the ship and be with friends.

Fish ‘n Chips

After that we took a walk around the area and took some pics along the harbor and the legislative building before having them drive us back to where the port for where cruise ships are.

And with that, we’re back on the ship and packing up and prepping for disembarkment tomorrow in Seattle the next morning! 🙂

A beautiful cruise comes to an end!

**I’ll be doing a little recap and feelings about the first cruise experience with the next week’s post along with the half day at Seattle.**

Have you been to Victoria, BC? How about Butchart Gardens?