Day one of Union Bay June 2025 vacation.

We took the 9am Hullo ferry to Nanaimo on Monday morning. Fast and pleasant - our second time taking it.

We took a waiting taxi to Enterprise Car Rental and got a VW Jetta. Drove it to White Rabbit Coffee and got drinks.

Decided to grab an early lunch, walked down to what we thought was a Thai place that was open, but it was closed so went to The Vault Cafe. Rachael had a BLT with cheese sandwich and I had a burger that ended up being on the same bread, with a very nice side salad with blueberries and strawberries in it.

Walked back and did a shop at Old City Cheese & Market (formerly McLean’s Foods but taken over as of June 1st).

Bought Emmenthal, some French Brie, and Buchaton? cheeses. Bought farmer’s sausage, Andouille, and Sremska. Some olives with lemon, crackers, bacon ends, mustard, a Favuzzi Herb Salt we really like, cultured butter, and eggs.

Rachael looked at some Matcha Milk Jam and we might go back for it.

Drove up island. Actually an hour and 20 minutes, so we nt on to Thrifty’s in Courtenay to get other supplies.

• Steak
• Yellow potatoes
• hummus
• baby carrots
• 2x big local hot house tomatoes
• cucumber
• hint of lime old Dutch chips
• cream
• oat milk
• garlic

We got in and settled and I made dinner. Steak on the BBQ with salt and pepper. Boiled potatoes. A cucumber tomato salad with olive oil, salt & pepper, dried rosemary and marjoram and a little too much fresh minced garlic.

After dinner drove to Ships Point Park https://maps.app.goo.gl/Fq6SiAzFByyvNsE97?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy intending on a walk but it was mostly a small beach of eel grass. So we walked around the neighbourhood.