Marina Music - Oak Bay

After lunch at the Marina Restaurant (see yesterday's post) I strolled out to the end of the parking lot where I found this cool jazz group playing. Their jazzy renditions of popular classics fit perfectly with the warm afternoon sun and the spectacular view.

Marina Restaurant - Oak Bay

I had the pleasure of lunching at the Oak Bay Marina Restaurant earlier this week and recommend it highly. The food was terrific and the views are lovely. That's the restaurant on the left of the above photo, with the boats at the marina scattered picturesquely before it.

Willows Beach

I like Willows Beach best of Victoria's beaches, mostly because it has everything a good beach should have: sand, water, a nice view, a pleasant scattering of people, great refreshment stand (best fries in town), lots of places to sit down and finally, a lazy ambience you can feel in the above photo. There is also a nice sidewalk just above the beach for those of us whose aging ankles are not up to trudging through the sand. In the photo immediately below you can see the beach proper. That's Cattle Point in the background. In both these photos we are looking roughly northeast.

In the photo below we are looking in the opposite direction, southwest, towards the Oak Bay Marina whose sailboat masts can be seen in the distance.

Snowbow

When we stepped outside the Oak Bay Marina Restaurant earlier this week there was a fine light mist falling. By the time I reached my vehicle this had become a fall of tiny little snowballs about the size of BB gun pellets. Then, while I stood to take this photo of the "snowbow" over the entrance to Oak Bay, the small pellets changed to pea-sized ice balls. Twenty minutes later that particular cloud had blown past and the sky was once again blue. In the photo above you can see the "snowbow" on the right side of the photo and if you look closely (or click the photo to enlarge it) you can see some of the small white snowballs that were falling.

Meanwhile...

...back in Victoria, to celebrate Fern's return from sunny Mexico as well as her birthday, we arranged a truly Canadian welcome home snowstorm for her. To enjoy this spectacle to the fullest, her uncle took the whole family the one of Victoria's favorite Sunday Brunch venues, the Oak Bay Marina Restaurant. It's a magnificent all-you-can-eat buffet - Eggs Benedict, croissants, shrimps, beef and a cornucopia of other good things to eat (click HERE to see the Sunday Brunch menu). Even a vegan like myself went back to the buffet twice and had to loosen my belt. The snowstorm only lasted about 15 minutes and was little more than a pretty reminder than winter is not over yet

Oak Bay Marina

Visitors to this blog will have noticed that many of the photos include boats of all shapes and sizes, not surprising for a coastal city on an island. Some people live on their boats but most boat owners must find places to moor them while they live and work elsewhere. This is one of the largest marinas in the greater Victoria area, called the Oak Bay Marina. This photo was taken about a week ago before our atmosphere became polluted with smoke. Much of the province of British Columbia is experiencing forest fires right now due to extremely hot dry weather. The smoke from these fires now lies over this area like a dense smog.