Hippocratic Oats

Bed of Roses…Day four in Canada

July 31, 2009 at 12:02 pm Leave a comment

The day after the wedding, we got a bit of a late start.  We were all pretty tired from the festivities, but we still made it to Butchart Gardens in the early afternoon.  For those not familiar with Butchart Gardens it’s an incredible place.  According to wikipedia, it’s “is a group of floral display gardens in Brentwood Bay, British Columbia, Canada, near Victoria on Vancouver Island which claims to receive more than a million visitors each year.” It’s HUGE.  Fifty gardeners work year round to keep up with all the floral displays.  I have a few pics to share, but there are just too many photos to put up.  Once again, we had awesome weather so the lighting for all the pics was perfect.

Richard and I at the gardens

The Italian Garden

Jamming

When you visit Victoria, a must-do is afternoon tea.  The most famous place to do so, is at the Empress Hotel.  Tea at the Empress didn’t quite work out for the group, but we did have a chance to do afternoon tea at the gardens.

I opted for the Teaberry Blend (Black Ceylon tea flavored with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and currants

Apparently, before tea is served one needs to cleanse the palate.  To do this, we were served a Seasonal berry trifle (layers of sponge cake and seasonal berry compote, finished with chantilly cream)

Each pair of people were served this three layer treat

Bottom level: “The Salty.”  Included a savory house-made sausage roll with imported mustard, roasted vegetable and cheese quiche,  and sandwiches with locally smoked wild BC salmon with maple and whole grain mustard cream cheese, egg salad and watercress, mango-curry chicken salad with toasted cashews, smoked honey ham on a rosemary and aged cheddar biscuit, and cucumber with fresh ginger cream cheese

Middle layer: “The Sweet.” Included lemon tartlet with fresh fruit, raspberry marzipan Napoleon, lemon and poppy seed loaf, coconut chocolate macaroon, chocolate Grand Marnier truffle.  Top level (not pictured) was a candied ginger scone accompanied by strawberry jam and whipped vanilla Devon-style cream

After a lengthy conversation about our favorites, I decided my overall favorite was the tarlet

All of us at Tea

We had tea around 3pm so we weren’t entirely hungry around dinner time.  Instead we opted to take a walking ghost tour of Victoria.  I do love a good ghost story, but I can’t say it was my favorite part of the trip.  I’m not a huge believer so many of the stories had me rolling my eyes.  Guess its that whole scientist thing that makes me want hard facts and not “feelings.”  Since the ghost tour didn’t end until 11:30 pm and we hadn’t had dinner yet, we tried a few different places before we found a ktichen open.  Interestinly enough, at one of the bars we ran into the bartender from the dance portion of the wedding.  He definitely remembered us (Mo in particular;) ).  Mr Bartender man suggested a place called the Mint.  It was dark so the picture didn’t come out all the great.  The Mint is a funky, relaxed lounge & restaurant serving up Tibetan and Nepalese cuisine.  I loved the vibe at the restauarant: hip but not too trendy that I felt like I needed to up the cool factor to be there.  There was a DJ spinning some fun mixes and there was exposed brick.  We all know how much I love exposed brick

The only part I didn’t really like about the Mint was how dark it was.  I have this thing with only eating my food if I can see it.  Luckily, my camera flash is amazing and by taking a pic of the food, I could get the idea.  I opted for a Butter Chicken Naan Pizza.  Sounds kind of strange but it was a delightful fusion of italian and indian food.  Spiced it up!

Kyle ordered sorbet for desert…mmm!

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