A surprise date

Ryan decided to plan our anniversary date for while we were in Victoria. He was very secretive and sneaky about it too! He headed downtown in the morning and told me to meet him outside the Bay on Government St at 4 pm. I asked what I should wear and he replied "It dosen't matter". So I decided to dress nicely, but not fancy and met him.

Ryan was in a completely different outfit to the one he left the house in. All new clothes, and not a bag or old item in sight. My first question after complimenting his choice of shirt had to be "Where are your clothes?" He refused to give me a satisfactory answer but told me we were going shopping for a dress for me. (Yipee!) He patiently waited while I tried on a few at a couple stores, then I settled on a purple/cranberry coloured one in a jersey knit that was casual enough to wear anytime (and nicely matched the necklace I had worn).

Next, we went to Paggliachi's for dinner. Oh! how we loved that bread. Their bread is one of the things we miss and crave most about Victoria. Our meals were very good too. Ryan's was WAY too spicey for me. I tried one noodle and felt my mouth burning. I had a salmon salad which was wonderful. It had avocado, artichoke hearts, (some of my favorite foods) and capers (which I had never tried before) . Yummy!

After dinner, I asked if he wanted to retreive his clothes from the ... locker? where he had them stored. (my only guess was he had rented one of the lockers in the mall for his bags) He declined and suggested a walk. We headed for the harbour and when we got to the Empress, he suggested we go inside. Finally, I figured out where his stuff was!

He had negotiated a very nice deal on a room and we were spending the night at the Empress! Our room overlooked a courtyard near the check-in desk. We had the 'bed and breakfast' deal which included breakfast for both of us for $10! (We saw the bill the next morning and our breakfast would have cost about $45!) He had bought a toothbrush and deoderant for me and had stocked the room with a bottle of wine chilling in some ice. I had a glass wine and we walked to watch a street performer at the harbour, then poked around some of the tourist stores.

The next morning, after a wonderful breakfast ( I had bananna bread french toast) we headed to Value Village then home.

It was a great way to celebrate 9 years of marrige.