Salt Spring Island | Saturday Market, Food & Hidden Gems | Canada Travel Vlog 🇨🇦

Hey hey hey welcome to the first of our Canada travel vlogs. Now we're on Salt Spring Island and it's a fabulous island and we're going to show you the top attractions here. Now you can get here one or two ways by ferry. Now the BC ferries operate from Vancouver Island, Vancouver itself or anywhere of the other southern gulf islands or if you fancy it you can get here by float plane. And here's the seaplane close up it's actually parked in the harbour at the moment. So one of the top attractions on Salt Spring Island is the Saturday market. Now it's the first day it started today we're going to have a little mooch up there see what they're selling. Right a very quick walk through here tells me there's everything you're going to get everything from a massage to hemp to candles to cakes to breads. We'll show you a couple of the things that we've seen but wow this is an artisan's dream isn't it? It is an incredible market. So this is Wendy's West Coast artisan. Now Wendy you've been on the market for four years now haven't you? This market? Yeah and I have a B&B. Oh you've got a bed and breakfast have you? Which one's your bed and breakfast? Magnolia Petal. Okay that's brilliant to know and this market gets really busy in the summer doesn't it? It does. Am I right in thinking that on this market everything has to be made in Salt Spring? Yeah so you cannot have something that's been made in Vancouver either? And look at her artwork it's incredible. There's even psychic readings etc. Now there's a couple I saw a tarot lady down there but there's a couple of people doing this. $50 for 30 minutes $100 for an hour $100 is about 50 quid. Look at this there's nobody at this stall at the moment handcrafted guitars but this is fantastic look at this oh wow. I've just met Iria and this is something I've never seen before so what they've got is they've got these essential oils and what do you do with it? You pop it in there? You can wear your essential oils and then they will evaporate around you and then when you fill them you just take a little eye dropper and you pump the oil through the bottom and then the shape traps it like a wasp trap but still allows it to evaporate so you can enjoy your essential oils as you're wearing it. The sale Gary's a blowout sale so all the clothes let's sort of see the prices okay $50 do you know what that's a really nice dress probably would look awful on me if I'm honest but $50 is only 25 pounds I'm tempted to get one of these floaty tops do you know what I mean? Hide a little bit of the overindulgence but wow these are really nice they're not actually they're not actually bad price bands the only thing is Gary's right proper out against these sort of outfits I said it's like it's only 50 dollars he's like it is I don't like it do you? I would like a white one if I could find a nice white floaty top I would get 100 cotton and all that and we're feeling a bit starving and we found a Thai soup place I'm really fancy a bit of that so the guy's saying it's a bit spicy aren't you a little bit spicy yes and I've told him we can um so we're gonna go for two small chicken yeah the chicken Thai one yes and how much are the small ones each uh nine each so the nine dollars each which is around about a fiver that ain't bad so people come from all over to Salt Spring Island to see this market and it's only open in the summer and today is obviously the first day that it's open uh the 5th of April isn't it and it'll just be open for the summer season but if you're in this area you've really got to come I can't believe how great it is it's just everything makes you feel it's so artistic and got a great vibe to it it's really warm friendly interesting it's brilliant so here is our Thai chicken soup looks really nice actually Gary what's your verdict I think it's really nice nice and spicy is it oh Gary says it's spicy it must be quite spicy okay so we've been given a couple of crackers and these are gluten-free crackers made with almond flour I'm gonna give it a bit of a whirl I love anything different like this oh my god this is delicious this is gorgeous well worth the five a Gary I'll tell you what I love about it on this market so I was just talking to one of the stall holders and he says I like your energy you know it's stuff like that that's the compliment isn't it like I like your energy you know I like that myself because I feel like that you know I can tell sort of like somebody's really good energy and good energy breeds good energy doesn't it Gary it does although Gary's a bit more of a like he's not really into any of this sort of well what you might you probably call sort of arty stuff don't you excuse me all right would you like to pick a car okay I'm videoing so you're gonna have to be on video okay so this lady has come over and okay I'll pick a car this lady is cost our child a mystique okay let me pick a card then are you going to charge me for this I'm just making a big time oh my god she's going to charge me you're not going to charge me for this are you because you're on video that's wonderful well then it's up to you well what do you want to you want to we want me to pick how much are you charging to read one of my cards it's up to you how you feel about it oh okay I don't know I'll tell you how I feel hungry I'm scared now all is good as well it's only beauty and grace and joy and we're here to bring you can't improve on perfection which she is she's perfect okay take your card baby honestly I'm good oh but now we said all that I know but now just for fun I won't charge you okay well just for fun you got it on camera okay I'm gonna pick one card just for fun but the universe is gonna pay me big time you see it well absolutely okay so I'm um take one of my darling take one I'm gonna take that one take this one do I show do I show oh I picked three by accident there's never an accident you see I told you she was twice as good as everybody else oh look what I got what did I get the beauty way oh and the beauty way is about walking and smelling the flowers and walking and see beauty in people and see beauty in your world just be thankful for everything be thankful to have this beautiful man I'm so good but I have one of my own so I'm good I'm so good well that was brilliant thank you so much I just witnessed the other one well we will be able to show all of this on it I've got to edit it it's got to be within 20 minutes oh but I haven't got that much of a video this one is the earth okay how much none this is all go this is gonna have to go unless it's really good that's the curse oh no she just picked up the curse oh lovely look they're making fresh crepes look at that looks nice doesn't it I love this picture this is definitely my favourite did you do that yeah it's lovely Barry loves woodwork stuff so you're really really intrigued by this aren't you wow these are really nice utensils some of the final work is just scraping any marks off of them oh right do a final sanding I can also kind of shake it with this if I if I don't like if I want to change something so I've got something I've got myself a purry spoon we're walking through salt spring a market and this lady's just come up to me and she knows of us because Philip Baker hello Philip who lives in Spain told him to look out for us and she's just spotted us so hi Philip really taken with these beeswax products look at these aren't they gorgeous so these are eighteen dollars each but they're such natural beautiful products so this is Chris from the Piper's Buns and he's right down to his last bits now aren't you it's obviously sold really well how long have you been doing the market Chris two years and it's always a good seller is it oh it's got a lovely vibe down here isn't it yeah it's great to meet you Chris really interesting little glass guy here tell me what made you start doing anime well my wife and I have always been very interested in cartoons and anime characters yeah when we started to work with glass we were just like a notice that no one was really doing glass animals anymore okay that people were pursuing and we're like let's bring glass animals back in a way that is more contemporary a little bit of pop surrealism a little bit of anime a little bit of cartoon and then we'll bring back glass animals as a collectible toy so rather than buying plastic or vinyl you can buy something that is handmade and it was made entirely out of glass and made by a real person and not an effect some of the artists don't want you to film them i've just been in trouble by the hat guy um so what you've got to make sure is like don't film don't take pictures of anything unless you've asked so the top attraction in soul spring island is ganji's harbour itself and we've come down here because we need to pop to the bank don't we get a couple of bits but we'll show you what's down here it's a really cute little town so the harbour is just down here but you've got loads of these beautiful old quaint shops and restaurants around so salt spring island has a deep historical connection to the british royal navy in fact before 1910 salt spring island was actually called admiralty island in honor of rear admiral robert baines who was the commander of the british pacific fleet in 1859 when the island got that name now hms ganji's an 84 gun british warship was his flagship and the captain of hms ganji's was captain john fullford and that is where ganji's town and fullford harbour get their name this is the infamous tree house cafe and you'll see that the cafe is actually built around this tree isn't this brilliant this is the inside of the restaurant literally the trees inside it and you've got dining carriages either side so they've got a centennial park down here as well aren't they there's a little boardwalk there's loads of different shops it's really artisan though isn't it's really individual it's a really nice place to come and today i mean it's a bit gray it's a bit windy but what a lovely place yeah we love wow look at this driftwood carving it's called mother and child so we've come down to fernwood point beach and it's really beautiful day today and we've just stopped outside of a restaurant called off the hook and we're going to come here for our anniversary on friday so we'll show you what it's like when we come so they've got these great big chairs i always call them anaconda chairs what are they called again adirondack it's easier to say anaconda so there's a beautiful jetty that you can walk out on but there's a really interesting notice on the notice board about orphaned seal pups apparently there's about 5 000 harbour seal pups that are orphaned each year in british columbia and what you're supposed to do if you see something if you see a seal pup that looks maybe a bit injured like this one or it's eating something inappropriate you have to report it don't touch it and keep people and dogs away from it and then it's got a number here that you should call look at this i love the fact that canada do this we've seen this a few times in america as well they have live jackets um for kids so that they can use these are obviously to borrow and it's an honesty thing so you're expecting people to pop them back wow everywhere he looks just like an amazing photo opportunity it just looks stunning doesn't it honey max enjoying it at the end of the jetty there's some signs and what's this all about then gary so this one here is telling us about the european green crab which apparently is one of the world's most invasive species really yeah and it changes whole ecosystems because of what it eats that local crabs don't like like the kelp and the seaweed and all that so the local crabs here are there's three types there's the kelp crab that's the hairy helmet crab hairy helmet i think some of my mates when i joined up had those and the hairy shore crab and they're all the local species but they're quite small but this this uh european green crab is quite big now we're not sure if we'll spot some whales off of here but wow wouldn't that be incredible oh this is just wonderful and you can jetty here for 24 hours it says doesn't it you can stay here for 24 hours if you're on a boat yes but that's the maximum wow that'd be a nice thing to do wouldn't it well talk about wildlife we've just spotted an otter right on top of the jetty here obviously we're not going to let matt go near it that's the important thing gary you might need to pop him on his lead oh how lovely so we've just got to share with you this absolutely lovely memory bench so it's in memory of a guy called jim good um but you won't believe what somebody has actually etched on this look at that i hope austria is it astria explodes or austria not sure who the hell would write that on somebody's memory bench shame on you it's such a beautiful location as well max just made a little friend here's a friendly little guy here on the road we love these walks around here don't we hon it's just beautiful walking on salt spring hello you're a friendly little guy aren't you so it's another rainy day on salt spring island and actually it's been raining about 75 at the time since we got here there's a golf course and this is what salt spring island's sort of main arterial road going towards ganges looks like now heading to a supermarket today we love heading to country grocer because country grocer does a 10 discount on a tuesday so we head down there on a tuesday don't we get our 10 off okay so here's country grocer here and next door there's a liquor store they sell their alcohol separately so when you walk in the store you've got a health section and this is where they sell all sorts of bits and pieces shampoo anything and then you've got the supermarket element over here now it is expensive they've got self-service tills and also normal tills i'll be honest with you the products in here are incredible this is why we shop here they've got loads of organic products and loads that are local as well so honestly i've never seen such a well-stocked organic aisle i mean just look at this massive array of organic produce it's just fabulous now i'm not going to do a full-on shopping vlog today but what i would say is it's proper expensive in here but look at the produce these baked potatoes honestly these are amazing $1.77 but look at the size of them they're gorgeous massive baked potatoes all their products are just incredible $8.99 for the strawberries organic though really nice selection of peppers and just to give you an idea that's $6.99 for those which actually it's not really that bad really the price of meat $68 for this leg of lamb but wow it looks like the really nice piece of lamb chickens are about $20 some go down like this one for $14 there and the beef here we go $41 for this beef so here's our trolley load and we bought some heart and kidneys for the dog he loves that and we've got a bit of fish we've got chicken we've got all sorts of little bits and pieces we've got a bit of sushi for lunch which we really enjoy this is lovely honey and stuff and some salad so let's see what this comes to it's not a massively full trolley so it's about $350 for our shopping oh dear tell you what it's bloody dear in there isn't it gary so $350 roughly for that bit of shopping we didn't get loads either did we no it wasn't anywhere near as much as we normally get say in the uk or back home no i know i reckon those um kidneys that i bought for the dog might be people who've sold them like to pay for their shopping gary picked up an umbrella from um the house sitter's house and uh tilt it down gary for a second and he said i think we're gonna have to change umbrellas but i've said no he's uh oh you're plenty man enough to pull it off gary go on walk ahead try not to mince doesn't matter what the weather's like this one just loves getting in the water you having a good time it's down by the coast but i mean look at that it's beautiful hi did you enjoy that really nice little beach combing beaches it's absolutely wonderful gary reckons if he lifts lifts up this rock there'll be crabs do you reckon go on then there you go what's that one oh they're little ones oh god all right don't bring it that close oh look oh let it go free though it's a good boy well i never never seen a purple starfish look at these and there's a little family here now i thought they were dead but you're saying they're not just waiting the tide out are you sure they're not dead and we don't have to put them in the water i'm sure they're not dead because i'll be like won't be able to sleep tonight i think that getting them off this rock anyway if you are oh really yeah they're stuck solid so we're on our way to the restaurant and there's a deer in the road there's three ideas in the road my dear oh there's way too many deers going on here oh wow look at that now actually there's two on the bank there and two at the side oh they've gone that side well done everybody was safe back on the road right we've come for dinner crikey the car park is chock-a-block there is some room gary but my goodness yeah in where that white car is do you see that yeah well it's really nice in here and it's a lovely welcome as well but obviously there's people eating so we ain't gonna be able to do much talking it's lovely isn't it we've got a nice little window seat look we can see those um anaconda chairs i'm not saying i say it to annoy him but so here's our menu we've got the wine list out and we're trying to work out whether we bother to get a bottle of wine or not because gary can only have really you're only going to have one aren't you um although i can i can drink so it's an indian pop-up weekend so basically we've got indian menu today um or they've got sushi specials and to give you an idea like sushi rolls like you've got a serpent turf roll for 20 dollars now i'll convert that into pounds so you get an idea how much that is it's actually quite a good price isn't it so we've decided to go for sushi rolls we've got we've gone for two different types haven't we gary we've gone for the what is it serpenter and the full food roll so one's like sockeye salmon which is like local to here and one is the serpenter so gary's like but it's an indian night so we're going for butter chicken i had it on the flight if you didn't see our flight vlog you can have a look at me have chicken out that butter chicken let's compare the two because i thought that was pretty good for a flight menu it's inside in the bar it's really nice here we go then so these are the surf and turf rolls and that's the full food rolls isn't it yeah so gary you're going to have a little try he's going to give us a bit of a well he can use these chopsticks i'm rubbish with them did you want some of that soy sauce i don't want any of that okay let's see what you think of those love oh god it's all over the place oh crikey i'm never going to manage that that'll be on my uh they'll be getting the dinner medal in no time well go on then it obviously is good is it delicious yeah that's lovely that is and it's got avocado and steak in hasn't it yeah obviously right really lovely little thing they did so the lady brought out some homemade granola as a little gift for our anniversary i'll try and get us both in i'm making a spectacle in the restaurant now i've had two glasses of wine i'm starting to get there check out this butter chicken doesn't that look good wow color on that it's got a little bit of pita bread they ain't gone crazy on the bread normally i'd eat three times that amount to be fair but i'm on my second glass of wine but this is lovely isn't it gary we're having a really nice night oh my god this butter chicken all right it's making the airline one look bad the only fault i can find with this restaurant the staff are amazing the food is great the table's a bit skinny it could do with like three inches or so we're so childish we've come to salt spring island cheese and it's a little goat's cheese factory isn't it honey it is yes um gary's just checked it out and apparently you can bring dogs in on with the lead so we're just popping mac on his lead and we're gonna have a little look inside look even the chickens in canada have one of those anacondas look at this there's viewing windows so you can walk around they normally have the goats out here so you can look at them but because it's winter they're rehomed at the moment look at this you can have a right nose this is how it's being made although it doesn't look as if there's much going on today so basically there's a couple of information boards that are just outside the windows and it gives you the processes for the cheese it only takes four days doesn't it well three days it's packaged on day four look it's got all this information and then there's the next window oh wow they're washing the floor there so once you've been around all the windows you can then pop in the cheese shop right this is the gorgeous little shop when you walk in and it really smells delicious okay so what they let you do is let you have a little taster so i'm gonna try the brie style one did you say yeah juliette is a brie cheese yeah well i'll try juliette would you like to try a jam with it yes please what's your sort of jams um do you like spicy spicy sweet yeah i do we could do a little of the blueberry basil not too spicy peach lavender where the raspberry habanero is really spicy oh do you know what i'm gonna go for the peach lavender yeah for sure sounds nice okay so they give you it on a little cracker so i'll give it a little whirl now bit messy sorry oh my god that's absolutely delicious oh gary's got the duff end of the stick he's outside with the dog got a few offers on as well if you buy two cheeses you get a free flour basil or pepper one but look how beautifully they are packaged lots of other products like candles as well but that hot chili sort of sauce was lovely gary would really like that so i went for these two max having a good sniff 25 for the two which i actually think is not bad i can see why this is such a popular attraction honestly this has been really nice it's a rainy day today so we didn't have to queue to have samples but they really don't mind you having a little sample the products are amazing everything in there that they're selling has been made on salt spring island this is definitely somewhere you should come if you're going to visit salt spring island now we're over at fullford harbour you can get to vancouver island and it's actually really cute around here there's like a little mercantile shop there's a couple of little cafes an organic cafe there's even a post office just on one of our random walks around the island we've got a amazing farm stand that's built up like this it's called the hen and hound farm stand let's have a look what they got for starters they've got a couple of chairs that you can sit at and admire the ocean views so there's a real lovely selection of goods but there's also some daily baked goods and that's in this little tupperware box oh my god it's an amazing selection and they're only about two dollars fifty each which is really cheap there's all sorts of bits and pieces they've got some cards and everything this one salty af seven dollars for those oh wow i've never seen anything like this so they've got meat for sale and all sorts of bits seafood chowder lovely salmon porches they look really good all sorts of bits and there's different ways that you can pay as well you can pay either cash in the box e-transfer or credit and debit card well in a nutshell i suppose salt spring island's a bit quirky definitely a bit hippy it is isn't it you know it's artistic you're going to get the best food you've probably ever tasted we've really enjoyed salt spring island and we're going to be here for another couple of weeks but our next few vlogs will take you over to vancouver island and then after that we're picking up that rv in a couple of weeks we can't wait to pick up that rv where we'll be touring idaho and we'll be touring the canadian rockies so if you don't want to miss that you better hit that subscribe if you're not already if you are thanks very much for being part of this um been great to see you guys join us next time love you loads take care bye