Vacations that do involve Sid and don’t involve my ex-husband really helps narrow down the choices. Since Sid came into our lives, my girls and I have taken him on two bigger vacations, meaning out of province. I do need to work on getting passports as I’ve mentioned previously and since his will involve the agency, will take more time. As an aside, I’ve added Croatia to the list of places I want to travel to, (was a previous daily prompt).

Now back to the prompt, last September we flew out to BC, (British Columbia), to visit my older son who lives and works on Vancouver Island. For those who are unfamiliar with Canadian geography, BC and more specifically Vancouver Island is akin to California I guess. Not the climate per se, as it obviously gets much colder, but WHERE it is located in our country. Also it is probably the best and warmest climate in Canada.

In the city of Vancouver and on Vancouver Island, even in the winter months, it’s usually too warm for any snow. it stays green all year long. The snow might fall but it doesn’t stay.

We flew to Vancouver and took a two hour ferry across to the Island and ended up in Nanaimo. It was absolutely stunning. Nanaimo is on the eastern side of the Island, a beautiful and pretty modern city. The city my son lives in, Port Alberni, is about 45 minutes from there.

We spent our time exploring the beautiful landscape around Port Alberni and acting like tourists with Taz as our tour guide. Think mountains, an inlet from the Pacific, also various lakes and then forest foliage from a Jurassic World movie (one of them was actually filmed partially there in Forest Grove).

We took a day and drove to the west coast of the Island and saw the tourist hot spot Tofino which is a quaint but busy little coastal town. It’s known for surfing I think. We also stopped in Ucluelet, my fave, and had to walk on Long Beach with my daughter Bella, as that’s where part of one of the Twilight movies was filmed. It was the first time I actually watched people surf in real life.

After a few days of Port Alberni and area, we drove south, as far south as you can go on Vancouver Island and spent a few days in the capital city of BC, Victoria. I highly recommend! It’s on the water, it’s clean, it’s spectacular. We shopped, ate and did lots of walking in the downtown and waterfront area. There was an amazing little coffee shop and bakery just up the street from our airbnb, I was in heaven.

I hope to go back next March on spring break. That’s my plan. Flights have unfortunately tripled in price since I booked for that trip. 😦