Happy birthday beloved husband! Happy anniversary Jim & Anna!
Got up and met Jim and Anna for breakfast. Really nice place called the Blue Crab. Excellent food.
Looking east at sunset.I had the Continental buffet.Edie had the Continental buffet.Anna had a crab bowl that was so stylishly presented! Great toast, she said it was really good.Brother Jim had the standard breakfast, it looked great.View out the restaurant.We went up to Jim and Anna’s room, they looked out on our place.They overlook a working wharf.Jim said, “On the first day we said, ‘Look! a seaplane landing, how neat'”On the second day they’d say, “Damn, another seaplane landing! Â Gees they are loud.”
Jim and Anna had already been out earlier and said the inner harbor was starting to get full. We decided to go stake out a place earlier than what we had planned.
We found an excellent spot near people who had been coming for the whole 25 years – Heather and Owen. Nice people from Victoria but moving soon to Duncan. Had fun talking with them.
For a $5 donation you get a button.Almost unbelievably, I did not get a picture of Heather and Owen, together and separately, they looked nothing like this guy.Setting up the barge that holds the performers.The Ferry slips in and out while we wait, and wait.Apologies, hard to see, Owen told us it is a WWII bomber and it rents for $650. an hour. He had a friend that took up a collection and paid for a 90 year old WWII pilot veteran to get a flight in the plane.
Around 3:00 PM, I walked back down to the Worldmark to meet up with Jan, Caron and Jan’s brother, Jim (the other brother Jim). We took the water taxi back to the inner harbor. Fun. When we got back we found out we had been moved down a little bit from Heather and Owen, closer to the barge but behind people with very high backed chairs so the visibility was spotty at times.
The third meeting with travel friends. Caron is sometimes photo averse.Jan agreed to a photo after she was given veto privileges. (Jan, call me if it is not okay.)Jan’s brother Jim. Edie thought he was a hoot, she really enjoyed him.Our seats and the pretty woman from the upper level.
The wait was long and the sun was hot. We were all burning up. We took turns leaving the chairs to stretch or go get food. The wait was so worth it, though (at least to me).
Haven’t seen one of these since China.We all wanted one of these pontoon, catamaran, trike things.Neat big canoe.Canvas canoe!Notice the green stripe at the water line and all the chairs on the bow.We all stood for “Oh Canada.”Patriotic crowd.For a while we thought it might be sinking.
What an amazing evening with the symphony. This year they added a choir and more bagpipes. The cannon fire and the fireworks were phenomenal.
View of the stage from the upper walkway.Inner harbor crowd from the top of the stairs.These ladies and a child walked up to the edge, crawled over the chain and went down a ladder. I had to go to the edge and get a photo of where the heck they were going.
So pretty everywhere here, day, night, does not matter.
Looking forward to next year. We think we’ll park ourselves up on the main road near a tree (for shade). The other brother Jim decided to head back and opted not to go back to our room for drinks.
We walked back to our room afterwards and ran into a large group of military cadets pulling the cannons. Beautiful cannons. They did an excellent job of pulling it up onto the street up a steep driveway. Loved just running into them like that.
They were loud, and at all the right times.It just adds such an element to the Overture.You can’t help but think about the war of 1812 between Russia and France, the battlefield, loss and triumph.
The walk back itself was a bit scary because it’s not well lighted. We all made it though and got back to our room and had some wine, some laughs, and some fun talks. Excellent evening. Already looking forward to next year and planning how to do it better. We’ve booked the Worldmark for next year so we’re ahead of the game and have plenty of time to plan.
Dark, but okay.We changed rooms, we left in the morning, they moved our bags for us.We came back to our new diggs.We liked our other one better. It was higher and had more room.TV in every room.Edie’s favorite.
