Oh Canada!

Well, we just got back from a lovely trip up to good ol' British Columbia. Since their whole 'province' thing confuses the hell out of me, let me rundown my vacation locale the best I can. We went to Sidney, which is a township on Vancouver Island (not the wild swinging Vancouver city everyone knows of, a quaint little island right off the coast). It's a few miles up from Victoria, home of the famous Butchart Gardens and such. It was a blast, I can tell you that. I mean, the ferry ride up really sucked. We found out en transit that the cafeteria wouldn't accept plastic, nor would they accept any canadian change less than $1 (I had about $5 in loose change from past meanderings, although only 2 actual dollar pieces). So, we managed to scrounge up what we could with my two Loonies and some loose american change to get ourselves two snickers bars, since neither Rick nor I had eaten anything all day. Anyways, we quickly scooted over to my grandparents house and had a surprisingly delightdul visit with them. This is always kind of a tricky thing, you see, as my grandmother in particular is notoriously tempermental and we tend to but heads like cracked up mountain sheep. But the whole trip, not even so much as a disagreement!
We went to a nice little casino there, too, which was a hoot. I guess it feels better frittering your money away when it looks like monopoly cash. We won, though, so it's all good! They don't drink in their casinos, though, not like us horrible americans. They have a 'cart girl' wandering the floor that has tea (of course), coffee, and pop. They also have huge buckets of wet naps everywhere so you don't soil your delicate fingers on the slot machines. Everyone there, right down to the dealers, had that bizarre niceness about them that you only think exists in movies. It was fun for a bit, but after a while you start to feel like you are in the twighlight zone.
Anyways, I won't bore you with the particulars of our little jaunt, save that everything is written in french and english, and their currency is ridiculously named, which caused my husband a great deal of amusement. I mean, come on, the 1$ piece is a Loonie, and the 2$ piece is a...you guessed it, Toonie. I mean, was their treasury head Yosemite Sam?! A country that so desperately wishes to be taken seriously, yet dress their police like a gay nazi designed the uniform and named their currency Loonies and Toonies. Ooooooookay.
And apparently they HATE smokers. not only did it cost $20 for two packs of camels (yes, I swallowed my toungue), but their warning labels are new and graphically improved so as to either shame or completely gross you out of smoking. I've attached a pic of my pack below, so you can see how freaky that is. And that's not the only choice you get, oh no, they;ve got a whole slew of different ones, so you can collect them like Pokemon cards or something. I mean, I thought the creepy brain matter on my pack was bizarre, but then I saw one with a deseased lung on it. GAH! Oh, and they also insert this little card in it that you see right as you open the pack, like it's still desperately screaming at you not to do the inevitable light up. It says "YOU CAN QUIT SMOKING!" and then goes on a little tirade about quitting. And I thought Canadians were supposed to be all nice and stuff!