Mini Break Recap!

Finally I've snafoozed a little time to recap my mini break to victoria and *whew* what a whirlwind trip that was! Five solid days of travel, shopping, music, and limited sleep really catch up on you! And to top it all off apparently I got so excited during the trip that I forgot to properly photo-document the super fun events! (Trust me - this isn't the first time this has happened...I am a legendary over-excited/forget to document type). But all hope is not lost, I did manage to snap a few pics and am here to share the extremely truncated highlights of my trip! Yay! Let's go!

My mini break included:

1) Super fun shops! Yup, even though I was on a strict "you still need to be able to afford food" budget, I did manage to get a few thrifty purchases in some of victoria's lovely crafty/artsy/indie shops! In fact, I am planning a "kate's top three shops in victoria" blog post to come up later in the week (so stay tuned!). I love how downtown victoria is scattered with lovely independently owned shops full of interesting and amazing products! My favourite destinations included chinatown (with fan tan alley), government street, and (the oh so lovely) lower johnson:



And as if that wasn't enough, the victoria harvest festival was going on with the market on sunday for extra fun! I love their poster:


It was really neat to get a chance to try loads of locally produced products with a particularly enjoyable time in the taste testing beer garden! Fun!

2) Music Music Music! Four days of music with 7 venues and 125 performers to chose from! What a sensory overload! My particular favourite parts were the warchild charity acoustic afternoon shows (with killer lineups and fantastic unplugged-ness):


I also enjoyed quite a few of the evening shows! There were a few duds we stumbled upon, but we quickly learned from our mistake (read those festival programs more closely) and some great new acts I've totally fallen for (i.e. Kate Miller-Heidke (who I am so in love with I will blog more about later...), Micheal Barnard Fitzgerald (shown above at warchild), and Clay George). I also got the wonderful pleasure of seeing Wooden Sky for the third time - except this time actually seeing them (and not being blocked by a packed house of taller than me folks). Check out the amazing venue they got to perform in:


3) Victoria Sites! Nothing like the capital city of British Columbia to make you swoon! Apparently I only took pictures of the Empress...

yup...close up of the Empress... (notice amazing tree grooming):


Oh...not entirely true. There were quite the number of reject photos I decided not to subject you to...but here is one of my in front of the parliament buildings for proof:


Ack! Awful! That limited sleep thing didn't exactly do wonders for my photogenic-ness. Haha. Alas, looks like I'll just need to plan another trip back soon so I can work on my photojournalism! Hooray! Or, more practically, just focus on taking pictures for my trip to smithers this next week...