Blog # 172 February 6, 2010 -
Forgive me faithful followers, it has been 17 days since my last posting and we have been busy.
After much thought, sleepless nights, countless bottles of wine and endless discussion we have decided to move to Victoria on Vancouver Island this spring.
There are many reasons for this - we had always intended to move to Victoria once our kid was through high school...but recently started thinking why not go now?
High school starts in Grade 9 so it will be a perfect time for our teen to start high school with all the other teens - including, but not limited to, his toddler best friend who moved there several years ago.
The real estate market in Vancouver is insane, we can sell our house for a healthy profit and intend to buy something with lots more room ( need more space for teenager activities) and something with a basement suite we can rent out to generate more income for our fast approaching old age.
We are ready for a change. The last several years have been stressful, tiring and difficult - time to make a change and start over somewhere new. Let's get up and go while we still have some "get up and go" left. My husband has lived in many different places (born and raised in Chicago) including living in Victoria for several years. While I, with the exception a brief stint in the suburbs in my formative teen years, have always lived within five miles of where I grew up in Vancouver - time to expand my horizons!
Why Victoria? - we love it there, our favourite place in the world is just outside Victoria - Point-no-Point...and we are lucky, we already have many friends there so it will be an easy transition.
Anybody who knows this part of the world also knows that moving from Vancouver to Victoria is not like moving to completely different place. But there will be many differences. For instance, Victoria is on an island and we will have to take a boat to get back to the rest of Canada.
It is a much smaller city and there are many, many old people (it is the retirment capital of Canada). They drive very slowly and like to do their grocery shopping at the busiest time of the day. It can be very annoying. However, soon we will be old people and we will fit right in.
Everyone there is white - well maybe not everyone but it sure isn't very ethnic. We live in a very multi-cultural world here in Vancouver and it will be very different to be in the majority instead of the minority (my son has been one of only five caucasion kids in his class since kindergarten) - this will take some getting used to. We will need to wear Gortex and talk about retirement savings plans.
On the very large plus side, Victoria is stunningly pretty - we can walk to the beach in 20 minutes, a very temperate climate with less rain than Vancouver, it is the birthplace of Thrifty Foods (my favourite grocery store) and there is a Thrifty's on every corner.
We are very excited about the move and everything seems to be working out to send us in that direction.
We have already bought a house there - more on that in later blog.
We are listing our house this week, the first open house in next weekend. So right now, I am up to my you-know-what in de-cluttering so that we can "stage" our house. And you know how they make it look so easy on those decorating shows? Turning your house into a show home in 22 minutes ...hahahahahahahahahahhahhaha.
So, more to come on the house sale and new home in Victoria and the trials and tribulations of the Vancouver real estate market.
We move in May - Victoria, here we come!
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