Victoria Trip

Every trip has its exciting adventures and possible challenges. Sort of like landing a person on Mars.

This time, we’re off to Victoria. The garden city. My home town. A quiet oasis of gourmet restaurants, hanging flower baskets and people obeying the speed limit. It’s a lovely town that caters well to tourists, people with dogs and the queen.

It does not, however, have any zoos, aircraft carriers, rollercoasters or a park full of lego. There’s not even a dedicated Lego store, for the love of God. This is a place people come cuz, you know, it’s pretty.

But, pretty or not, we’re going to mostly visit friends and family. A few have kids. Most do not. We’ll be there for 5 days. We won’t be able to see everyone, but we should be able to see a lot of people.

However, seeing people will present some challenges. The boys might actually have to play outside with a ball or something. They might even have to talk to people.

Or sit still.

I’m not worried, though. Unlike San Diego, this isn’t a trip strictly for them. It’s the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world’s time to meet most of the people who are important in my life. Well, at least the people in Victoria.

I know they are all dying to meet her.

Still, I know with kids we couldn’t fill up every day with, you know, meeting new people, having a nice cup of tea, talking about life and stuff… That would just be too much.

So, we’ve got a few things planned. No waterslides (amazingly, Victoria does not have a waterslide park, I guess, due to possible hip injuries or something). No theme parks (unless you include tea at the empress where one should really dress accordingly). No fun playlands filled with video games (though I did hear that the local theater got a new pac man game in).

No, here it’s all about seeing stuff. Beautiful sun sets. A blue bridge. A fisherman’s wharf. The parliament buildings. A few lovely museums.

But you can almost see the rolling of the boys’ eyes the moment you say, ‘lovely’. You can almost hear the thunderous slump of shoulders when you add the word ‘walk’.

Now there is a cruel and dark part of me that would love to torture them with a slow, meandering stroll through the flower gardens at Beacon Hill while the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world and I saunter arm-in-arm and remark, in english accents, how marvelous the roses are this time of year.

But I’m a better man than that.

Mostly.

So, in addition to all the wonderful people we’ll see, we’ll make an effort to kick up some of the ‘lovely’ sites to ‘kinda cool’.

I mean, hey, the museum has Vikings! The inner habour has buskers. We can take a double-decker bus! And we could even do a few twists on the usual sights.

It’s not like the boys won’t have a bit of fun meeting everyone. I just want them to have a bit of fun in Victoria as well. However, just in case of a severe attack of boredom, we’ve packed the 3DSs, and Clash of Clans is loaded up on my phone.

For them, the latter is like crack cocaine on a soother.

So, unlike San Diego where the challenges were –  would we be able to travel together, would we overdo things, would the boys go nuts-insano in the theme parks?  The challenge on this trip is one of balance. With the right mix of people-meeting and fun-having, this could be an epic success.

Though I would be happy with a ‘not an epic fail’.

So, for the next 2 week, yes, it’s traveling with kids, again. A post a day to keep the blues away.

If you have any thoughts, or similar stories, or just want to bug me about punctuation or grammer, drop something in the comments section, I’d love to hear from everyone.

And, as always, if you remotely like anything I’ve written, please share with friends, family and hollywood producers. (FYI, Nathan Fillion will play me in the movie.)