{"id":89,"date":"2009-10-14T22:58:46","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T05:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nerdhive.org\/glob\/?p=89"},"modified":"2013-01-29T20:27:47","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T04:27:47","slug":"long-beach-vacation-day-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/?p=89","title":{"rendered":"Long Beach vacation day 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday October 11, 2009.<\/p>\n<p>Today I tried to catch up with some of the Victoria tourism I had planned. The two main items on my itinerary for today were the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.butchartgardens.com\/\">Butchart Gardens<\/a> and the <a href=\"http:\/\/butterflygardens.com\/\">Butterfly Gardens<\/a> right next door.<\/p>\n<p>Butchart Gardens was smaller than I remember, but then I was a lot smaller last time I was there. Rewarding though, and I got some good pictures, but too many to upload over the wireless from where I am right now; I&#8217;ll post them to the gallery after I return home.<\/p>\n<p>Butterfly Gardens was a bit of a disappointment, but only because I&#8217;ve recently been to the Vancouver Aquarium, which also has butterflies on exhibit. Butterfly Garden had two or three species not represented at VanAqua, but that&#8217;s not enough to get me excited about it.<\/p>\n<p>After that I went to Russell Books; I missed them yesterday, but luckily they were also open today. Got there about an hour before closing, but they&#8217;ve got so much stuff I could spend a whole afternoon browsing. Did come away with:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The Art of Science Fiction&#8221; by Frank Kelly Freas<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Revolutionary&#8221; by S. Andrew Swann<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Engines of Creation&#8221; by K. Eric Drexler<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Singularity is Near&#8221; by Ray Kurzweil<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Demon-Haunted World&#8221; by Carl Sagan<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That last is a second copy; I&#8217;m currently reading this book, and it has a sufficient combination of rarity and value that I picked up a second copy to give to someone. I don&#8217;t know who I&#8217;m going to give it to yet (speak up if you want it), but I think it&#8217;s a must-read for anyone who has trouble drawing the line between fact and fiction or between science and faith, or for anyone who interacts with people who have those troubles.<\/p>\n<p>By then it was supper time so I met up with Mike and we went out to a local color joint called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.johnsplace.ca\/\">John&#8217;s Place<\/a> and had a good meal and chat, then went to look at a few nighttime sights before calling it a day.<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s GPS track, with internal foot-tour detail of the Butchart Gardens:<\/p>\n<p>[gmap type=&#8221;satellite&#8221; width=&#8221;80%&#8221; zoom=&#8221;auto&#8221; center=&#8221;files&#8221;\u00a0file=&#8217;__UPLOAD__\/2009\/10\/20091011.kmz&#8217;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday October 11, 2009. Today I tried to catch up with some of the Victoria tourism I had planned. The two main items on my itinerary for today were the Butchart Gardens and the Butterfly Gardens right next door. Butchart Gardens was smaller than I remember, but then I was a lot smaller last time [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-sightseeing","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2490,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/2490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.soleillapierre.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}