Saturday, July 23, 2011

Butchart Gardens

Tonight was our trip out to Butchart Gardens. At the last minute we decided to buy charter bus tickets out there rather than depend on our knowledge of the local transit system. It was well worth the price of admission. The gardens were broken into five different areas - The Sunken Gardens which was the location of the original limestone quarry, the Japanese Gardens, the Mediterranean Gardens, the Rose Garden, and the Italian Garden. The most famous, and recognizable, are the Sunken Gardens;
The Japanese Gardens were very nice, though not as extensive as the ones in Portland.
After viewing all the gardens and having dinner we secured a place on the lawn area for the Saturday night fireworks that were scheduled to start promptly at 9:45 pm. And out of the thousands of people there we happened to sit by a family from Fair Oaks, right outside of Sacramento who are friends with the owners of Burkett's Auto in P-town. I told them I knew that owner, that he was my mom's mechanic, and I'd worked with him in regards to building permits when he was doing an addition to his house. Too funny! The fireworks were the best I'd ever seen and worth sitting around for about 2 hours for them to start.
The fireworks were set in time to music and had different themes. They even had a river dragon that spit fire made out of fireworks. It was so cool. And listening to everyone go 'ooohhh...ahhhh' all together was neat, too. We didn't get back to the hotel until after 11:00 pm, but thankfully we took an afternoon nap. And since we don't have anything planned until 11:30 am tomorrow we can sleep in all we want!

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