Parents Visit!

I am a totally terrible daughter for not blogging about this yet, but my parents were here last weekend and it was great having them in Victoria with me! They were awesome enough to pack up some the essentials that I had to leave behind in Trail (such as my summer tires) and drive it over the mountains through some crazy snowy weather and onto the island. Trying to decide what to do while my parents were here was tough since I am new to the area myself and have yet to discover my own personal favourite features to show people who are visiting. I knew that they wouldn't want to be spending a bunch of money on going out to eat, so I wanted to find some places that were new to me, but had great local reviews.

Then I thought to myself, where is a place that I gotta eat? Then my brain went into corny tourist mode and I hit the internet to see if "You Gotta Eat Here" or "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives" have ever gone to any local places that I would be interested in trying out. We decided to try John's Place which is a tiny local restaurant on Pandora Ave that is famous for its scratch cooking and homestyle menu (with many twists to make it not like what momma used to make). I had the Salsa Chorizo Benny, served on the amazing cornbread with a monster bowl of fruit on the side, and moaned in delight with every bite. The coffee wasn't very good, but my plate of food made up for that. I don't think mom and dad enjoyed their meal as much as I did mine, but I'd definitely go again to try many other things on the menu that peaked my interest. I really wanted the Ragin' Vegan Burrito but it was sold out, so I'll have to get it next time.

The second place we went to a couple nights later was Bin 4, which is another locally owned restaurant that specializes in burgers that are made with local ingredients, no hormones and good quality meats. I've been wanting to go to this place since I heard about it, since they have 2 kinds of lamb burgers, and I love me a lamb burger. I had the "My Big Fat Greek Burger" and it was really tasty! Not as tasty as the one from the Wooden Monkey in Halifax which I would step over my own sister to have again (kidding! kidding!), but still a good choice for anyone who likes lamb in the form of a burger.

See my dad, who LOVES burgers and I don't know of anyone who appreciates a burger as much as him, said that his burger at Bin 4 was in the top 3 burgers that he has ever eaten. Now. That's pretty huge. I don't remember the name of the specific burger that he got and it was a daily special so it's not on the regular menu, but this information about my dad alone should tempt you to try this place out.

While the folks were here, dad and I did a few good walks/hikes. One of them was up Mount Finlayson which is up by Bear Mountain, which is the area where they were staying while here. We've hiked some pretty good sized mountains, and this one is not big at all (just shy of 1400ft), so we figured it would be no big deal at all to climb one morning. Didn't research it, didn't look into it too much, just got up early Sunday morning, got into some walking gear and headed up. We didn't start at the point of the trail that most people take, so we missed this sign,

And this sign too,

And ended up climbing a pretty scary and trecherous trail. Like, I'm talking skinny scary pathways, steep and slippery rock faces, fallen tree, exposed roots to trip over, lose stones paths and areas where we would completely lose the trail and have to wader around looking for the way to go (orange markers on the rocks) without falling off the edge of the mountain.

All in all, it only took a little over an hour and a half to do the round trip which isn't all that long at all, plus we stopped to take bunch of photos, but the incline and grade of that trail was not at all what we were expecting. From the bottom, it really didn't look like much at all. Never judge a mountain by it's cover people!