We officially got accepted for permanent residence here in Canada!
So what does that mean?
This means we no longer have any restrictions like we did on our permits and we can stay here in Canada for 5 years before we need to renew it (which is apparently easy).
What next?
We need to get our PR cards, which we can do online and once we get those, we can get our new SIN (social insurance number).
Once that’s done, the process is done! Then, we’re able to come and go as we please and work here as we please for 5 years.
This is all exciting! We are glad the process is finally done and we’re residents of Canada!
We’re back! Hello! We went on a little trip to Sunshine Coast for Curtis’ birthday. You can read about it here.
On Tuesday 14th September, in the evening, we drove out to Horseshoe Bay to catch a ferry out to Sunshine Coast. Whilst it is not an island, it’s technically connected, there’s no other way to get there without a boat, so we took the ferry.
The ferry arrived late, but that didn’t make much difference to us, other than the fact we were hungry!
There weren’t many people on the boat, so it was quick and easy to get ourselves some food. We ate that and then the ride was pretty much over. (it’s only 40 minutes).
We drove off the boat and drove on to our first accomodation, which was a cute little cabin!
Here’s a low quality video of the cabin!
When we arrived, the cabin was incredibly cold as the windows were open, but after a bit of time with the fire on it got nice and toasty. We arrived fairly late, so once we got settled we watched a little bit of TV before sleeping.
Here’s another low quality video of the cabin!
Day 2
We woke up in the awesome cabin and drove down to Gibsons for a spot of breakfast.
We got a breakfast bagel each from a cafe there. The staff were wonderful (and one was British!) which made it a very nice experience.
Once we had our breakfast, we had heard that people were filming down the street for a holiday film! We went down to check that out, but not much was happening at the time, other than there being some fake snow on the floor.
We walked around Gibsons for a bit as there was a nice little marina area and the sun was shining!
After walking for a bit, we found a park to go to for a hike/walk!
We drove to Cliff Gilker Park where it said there were waterfalls and hiking trails, which sounded perfect.
The walk was through the forest with nice big trees and some really nice little wooden bridges!
We saw the waterfall, but it wasn’t really much of a waterfall, but still peaceful.
We walked around here for quite a while, mostly to just find all the bridges…we love bridges!
Once we left here, we drove to a petting zoo to let some animals, but unfortunately it was closed on that day, so we turned around and drove to something nearby that we found, called Robert’s Creek Pier.
Robert’s Creek is a small town with some nice little buildings that we looked at and when we went down to the pier we nearly got blown over it was so windy!
Wind!
We drove back to the cabin and had a look online for some places to get food and also a look for other things to do whilst we were in the area.
We eventually found a place for dinner, which was a Mexican place. Luckily, they were able to seat us once we got there (they were very busy!) And we grabbed ourselves some pretty tasty Mexican food!
We went back to the cabin and watched a bit of TV and relaxed.
Whilst relaxing, we heard some noises outside, so we checked and sure enough, it was a BEAR! We saw him right next to our cabin trying to get at the bins, but we think he scared himself away when he knocked over the bin.
It was our first time seeing a bear in the wild and it was pretty large and right outside!
Day 3 – Curtis’ Birthday!
We woke up, got ready and left the cabin to grab some breakfast.
We went to a cafe (after a bit of back and forth between two) and managed to get a seat. It was pretty small and busy!
We had to wait 45 minutes for our food, which seemed pretty long, and when we got the food it was…Alright. It looked good but wasn’t incredible. Curtis had a smoked salmon and dill cream eggs benedict whilst Kim had a breakfast bowl.
We left here and tried to go to a few cool looking spots with nice views, hikes and waterfalls, but they all seemed to be closed for some reason!
We ended up finding a park near the new cabin we were moving to, so we sat there for a bit and stared into the water.
We checked in to the new cabin and it was not quite as we thought. It looked like a cabin, but was pretty large. It was quite dark and just not as good as we hoped. But it did look cool!
Looks cool outside, right?
We relaxed for a bit once we got in. The weather had started to deteriate, which we knew was going to happen, so we prepared to just hunker down and do very little.
Kim found a really nice brewery called Batch44 and we headed there for some drinks and dinner. Kim also found out there was a quiz, so we entered that and didalright! We weren’t last, which is a win!
We headed back to the cabin and got some really good sleep.
Day 4
It was raining all day, so we just slept and stayed in, watching some TV and playing card games.
We went and got pizza for dinner. Nothing fancy but a bit of a tradition for lazy days!
There was a large wind/rain storm which blew over a power line! This caused us to have an outage and, as the power line was laying on the only bit of road in/out of the town, we were stuck in the dark!
We were able to get some candles from a neighbour and we spent the night playing cards and chatting. It was kinda nice, in a way.
We didn’t get too cold and headed to bed. We were however awoken around 02:00 when the power came back on! But we were glad that was able to get sorted.
Day 5 – The Final Day
We woke up and got some breakfast at a diner style place and then looked for something to do before we needed to catch our boat.
We found somewhere called secret beach (it was sign posted, so not very secret!) And we had a wander around on the beach and the logs that were on there.
Pretty nice place!
Kim found a nice rope swing and had some fun on that!
We took the ferry home and drove back. It seemed to take far less time!
We got home and made some dinner and then it was time for Curtis to play hockey. He’s finished his 3rd game now and is really enjoying being back out there on the ice.
Curtis has a goal and two assists already, all of which came from the last game!
And there we have it!
That was our sunshine coast trip. We hope you enjoyed having a blog to read again. We had some fun times and we were excited to share it with you.
Maybe we’ll have some other fun stuff coming up at some point, but we hope everyone is well.
It’s been an awesome 1656 posts, but now, we think the time is right to stop with daily blogs.
Why?!
Well, after this long of daily blogging, it can be a lot of work. Of course, COVID hasn’t been great for content and posting about work each day is fairly mundane (for both us and you) and difficult.
Don’t get us wrong, we’ve loved sharing our lives with everyone. For something that started just to keep a few family members in the know whilst we travelled, to something that has grown far more than we expected…It’s been awesome.
We now have all of these memories on a site we can visit whenever we want to see the awesome things we’ve done. That’s amazing.
What Now?
We’ll still be around & we’ll still post here!
We want to only post when it’s something exciting, important or interesting.
If we go on a trip, we’ll post, for sure.
We’re not sure if it’ll be daily, weekly, a roundup or whatever, but it’ll be something. We don’t want to give a specific schedule because we don’t want to put that time constraint on ourselves.
What you should know is that the content should be far more interesting, engaging and just overall better!
Goodbye For Now
We guess this is goodbye…for now.
Thank you all SO MUCH for the continued support.
Apparently 750 people follow this blog, and they’re just the subscribed people. 750!
What an insane number.
We’ve posted for over 1600 daysin a row.
We didn’t miss a day!
We have had nearly 40,000 views on this blog. That’s another insane number. Thank you.
We’ve hunted for wifi to get the blog uploaded countless times, in countless countries. We wouldn’t change that for the world. That was part of our travel experience and it was fun (at times).
This will be tough.
For over 3 years we have had a daily blog uploaded, so it’ll be tough and weird not to upload a blog, starting tomorrow.
Again, we have things we want to do, and things that’ll happen throughout our lives and as these things happen, or we go to cool places, we’ll absolutely upload a blog (or some blogs) all about our experiences.
Who knows when the next blog post will be. Maybe tomorrow (though unlikely) maybe next week, maybe next month…
All we know is that we are so thankful for everyone that has engaged with us and our blog over the three years.
THANK YOU ALL!
We’ll see you here at some point, for sure.
Feel free to continue staying connected with us on our Facebook, or through each of our Instagram pages!
If you’ve not seen all of our blogs, we recommend going to the visited places page and checking out all the places! There’s some cool things in there.
We got ourselves ready in the morning, had some breakfast, and got packed up and ready to go.
We changed the bed sheets and tidied up, as well as packed all of our stuff away.
Afternoon Tea
We took Linda for afternoon tea at 11:45.
The place seemed alright, but everything was just okay, which was pretty disappointing.
We headed back to Linda’s and hung out with her for a bit more before we had to leave and say goodbye until next time!
Leaving Victoria
We drove up to get our car cleaned at the car wash that we had bought a ticket for before but didn’t get to use on Wednesday.
We were waiting and a woman managed to make her car battery die right at the entrance to the car wash, so it took quite a while to actually get our car washed, so it was good that we left at such a good time!
We left the car wash after it was done and went to the supermarket and picked up a salad to eat on the boat.
We got onto the boat and got a pretty good spot! Masks are now mandatory again indoors, which includes the ferry, which is great!
We ate our salad and then we just relaxed. We were told there were whales, but we didn’t see them when we looked!
We got back to Vancouver and drove home, which took less time than expected.
We got back home and just did very little. Kim had a nice bath with bath salts she bought at her massage and we just relaxed.
We woke up and slowly got ourselves ready. We didn’t sleep well at all last night, so it was a slow morning.
We had some breakfast after we showered and then we relaxed for the rest of the morning.
At 12:30, we left to drive up to Sidney. Linda wanted to go back there after not being there for a while, so we took her there for a wander.
We got a coffee and a treat from the bakery and enjoyed those before walking to the waterside and enjoying the weather and the sea.
We managed to see a beautiful seal, until someone scared it away!
We then sat for a couple of hours facing the water just enjoying the scenery and enjoying people watching. There were a lot of kids playing around us, so it was fun to watch them.
We eventually got hungry so we headed back to the car and got on our way to the place Linda had booked for dinner.
We had planned to meet Linda’s friends, Dee & Steve, there (we know they read the blog…Hello!) But they were unable to attend, so we just went with the three of us.
Kim got a chicken burger and Curtis got a burger and they were alright!
Kim had a chocolate brownie for dessert and then we drove back home.
Curtis was pretty tired as he didn’t sleep well at all last night, so he had a little lay down and Kim did a bit of research for some things.
We didn’t do too much for the rest of the evening, just relaxed and chatted, really!
Kim did go out and check out Ogden Point, which she likes to do when here.
We woke up after sleeping very early last night and felt very well rested.
We had some cereal for breakfast and Kim then went out for a hot stone massage! She really enjoyed it, actually. She felt like jelly!
Mattick’s Farm
Kim got back and we went out to Mattick’s Farm.
This was only about 20 minutes away and once we got there, it was coffee time!
They had a restaurant and tea room, so we went to the tea room and got ourselves coffee and snacks. Curtis got a cinnamon bun and Kim had a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich.
We left here and went to play mini golf! They had a mini golf place at the farm, so we took Linda to play her first round ever!
The game was pretty close, actually, with Curtis coming out with the win in the end.
We really enjoyed that, actually, and it wasn’t really in the sun either, which was good for us.
We drove back toward Victoria and on the way, we stopped at a supermarket which is known for really cheap fresh fruit and vegetables, so we got in there and got some produce there.
Delicious Dinner
We got back home and relaxed for an hour or so and then we went to a restaurant that Linda has been visiting for a long while.
Curtis and Linda shared a ceasar salad and Kim had a French onion soup, which was her first time trying! She really enjoyed it actually, though it was a lot for her!
Curtis had a steak which came with potatoes and veg and Kim had chicken marsala with mushrooms and veg, too.
We really enjoyed our dinner and were perfectly full.
We headed back home and had some strawberries which Linda bought at the veg store today.
Drinks With Another Friend
We went for drinks with a friend of Kim’s from work just down at the brown’s social house in Victoria.
Curtis hadn’t met her before and Kim hadn’t met her in person but we had a good chat and a drink before heading back home to Linda’s.
We’re heading out again tomorrow, so that should be fun!
We woke up around 08:30 and we got ready to go out for breakfast.
We both walked up to the Beacon Drive in, a staple for us when we come here, and got ourselves some nice breakfast and relaxed there for a bit.
Linda came and joined us and we chatted whilst Kim ate an ice cream and then we left for a walk.
A Nice Walk
We planned to go into the petting zoo that was in the nearby park, but unfortunately it was closed! We were able to see some goats and other animals through the fence though, which was really nice.
We did a bit more of a walk around the area and Linda pointed out a few new places and points of interest nearby that we’d not seen before.
A Friend
We headed back to Linda’s place and then after a while, we both walked down to meet a friend of Kim’s for a coffee and we got to meet her child who is now nearly 1!
After a great long conversation, we walked back to Linda’s and got ready for dinner.
Delicious Italian Food
We met a couple of Linda’s friends at an Italian restaurant across the street which we had been to once before. It was AMAZING food! Kim had mushroom pasta and Curtis had lasagne. Both were phenomenal.
We got profiteroles to share for dessert and then we were truly stuffed!
Fisherman’s Wharf
We managed a nice evening walk to Fisherman’s Wharf just down the street, though it was pretty cold, so we came back to Linda’s and relaxed before heading to bed.
We woke up at a good time, though Kim woke up early as a dog was barking constantly in the hotel and she heard that so she couldn’t get back to sleep.
We got up and ready around 10:00 and packed up the last few things, showered and then took our stuff down to the car.
After checking out, we went to grab some breakfast. We found a cafe and Curtis got a breakfast muffin and Kim got a pesto and brie toasted sandwich, along with a coffee each.
We ate our food whilst sat in the sun and then we got the car and drove to a car wash. We vacuumed the car and then tried to go to a car wash, but it was too busy so we had to head to the airport.
Somehow, Curtis managed to lose his mask during this time, so had to use a disposable one for the time being.
We met Linda in the airport as she was returning from Kelowna on a flight and we were very happy to see Linda again after what must be at least 2 years!
We had a great chat on the way home and once we got back to Linda’s place, we had more of a chat with her and then we went out to the mall to see if we could get Curtis a new mask.
We found a mask, but it wasn’t actually that great. Linda then remembered she had a perfect one lying around, so Curtis has that now instead!
We went out for dinner with Linda to a place down the road called the steamship grill, which is somewhere we had been a few times with Linda.
Curtis had a salmon burger and Kim had a Nashville chicken caesar salad. Unfortunately, Kim’s food tasted a little fishy, so she didn’t really eat much, but we did have a lot of bread and chips so she ate those!
We walked back to Linda’s and spent the remainder of the evening having a great conversation, as always with Linda!
We have some fun times planned, and lots of dinners, over the next few days.
We woke up and had to check out at 09:00. We got ourselves ready, checked out and hit the road.
We drove until we got to Qualicum Beach, which had French Press Coffee Roasters where we had breakfast! Kim had bruschetta with mushrooms and arugula. It was very nice, though a little small. She had that with a pretty tasty mocha and a chocolate chip cookie.
Curtis had a sandwich with egg, tomato and some really nice bacon in and a cappuccino which had some very nice coffee in, that was roasted in house!
We had this and then got back on the road and drove onward.
Animal Sanctuary
We drove to the animal sanctuary called North Island Animal Sanctuary which was a really nice animal rehabilitation center which also had animals that could not be released into the wild, mostly due to injury.
Before we got there, though, we stumbled across a small old looking town that had, for some reason, some goats on the roof! We had to stop and check them out
We then started driving again, only to find an antiques store just down the road!
We went in there and Curtis managed to talk Kim out of buying an old sabre, though there were some cool items there.
We drove onward to the sanctuary and once we got there, we wandered around to take a look at all the animals. We took no photos here as it didn’t feel appropriate but the animals seemed well looked after and we got to see some awesome animals there, such as eagles and hawks. There was apparently a bear there but it must have been hiding as we didn’t get to see it, but it was actually a really nice stop along the way.
Little Mountain Lookout
Kim had noticed a place on the map called little mountain lookout which was meant to have some great views and it didn’t disappoint!
We drove up to this which was a VERY steep hill and once we got to the top, it didn’t look like anything. However, a short wander through the trees took us to a sheer cliff edge but with stunning views!
We left here and drove to get another coffee. We got this in a cafe in a small town.
Whilst there, we decided to check our reservation only to find out we had only booked one night and it was tomorrow, not today!
Luckily, we contacted them and were able to sort that out, though we did panic for a second.
Malahat Skywalk
We drove to a place that was suggested to us by Linda which is a new attraction.
This is a skywalk, a wooden walkway through the trees, and then a large spiral structure which gives amazing views and there was also a slide to go down from near the top!
We wanted to do the slide, so we queued for about an hour for that. Unfortunately, we got near to the top where the slide was and Curtis really needed to pee, so just had to hope that didn’t happen on the slide!
It was quite a large and fast slide, but it wasn’t bad at all, other than the bumps for Curtis! Luckily, he didn’t have an accident, which is a positive outcome.
We did the slide and then walked back all the way to the top of the structure which had a see through netting floor which could be walked on.
Kim decided this would be fun to roll on instead, so she did that, but did regret it a little after, due to the sheer height of the tower.
We took a look at the beautiful scenery, technically this area has a fjord, and it really was beautiful.
Nice Hotel & Italian Dinner
We drove onward from here to Sidney, where we will be for 2 night purely to relax and sleep! We have had a busy few days and a busy few weeks before now, so we wanted some time to just…chill.
We got to our hotel and it was around 19:00. We checked in and got to our room which is beautiful.
We were very hungry, so we went to a restaurant super close, which is an Italian restaurant.
We had to sit outside, which is good for COVID, but we were a little chilly. We could forgive that though, as the view was stunning.
We had to wait a while for our food but once it came, it was delicious!
We were pretty hungry by the time it arrived, so we ate it quickly and then decided it was relax time, so we went to the shop to get snacks and then went back to the hotel to chill out for the evening.
We work up at a good time again and Kim went out to get us breakfast.
We ate our breakfast and slowly got ready and managed to head out around 11:00.
We drove out to Forbidden Plateau which took us about 1 hour and 30 mins.
Forbidden Plateau used to be a ski resort but now it’s a short hike which allows everyone to get a great view of the water and surrounding areas. It was really quite beautiful!
‘Medicine Bowls’
We drove back down the road we came and took a sharp left to head down towards medicine bowls. This is a small waterfall with rock pools that people jump into and also just swim in. We didn’t have much interest in doing either, because it’s cold and jumping in is scary, but we walked to take a look.
We parked up in a safe location as, unless you have a truck, it’s not possible to drive the entire way there.
We walked for about 20 minutes to make it to the pools. There was a little hike involved but it was beautiful!
We really, really enjoyed this area! We were there for way longer than we expected but we just enjoyed looking at the water, sitting down and relaxing and just enjoying the quiet.
We walked back to the car and saw someone try and drive through the part just beyond where we parked where it was not really possible to drive and they scraped/damaged the bottom of their car!
Beer & Snacks
We drove form here to the nearby town Courtenay, where we had actually been before when we visited Comox in the winter a couple of years ago. We got ourselves a beer at a brewery and relaxed.
We left there and walked to a restaurant to get a quick snack. The snack turned into a huge meal and we really didn’t want that much food. We ate what we could and then we drove back to the hotel, which took about 1 hour 10 minutes.
We were tired, as expected, so we relaxed for a bit at the hotel and then went out to get some snacks and drinks for the evening.
We leave this area tomorrow and head out to a new area to do very little, though!
