By Maryanna Gabriel
Have been needing a rest. It was a fun farewell party with tributes, champagne, touching speeches, cake and laughter with dear friends, then breaking camp, and a final pulling up of stakes. (I know I just breezed through something huge with that sentence but one story at a time.)
A writer friend and I went for High Tea; it seemed a very Victoria thing to do. The Abkhazi Gardens was built by a Russian princess and wealthy heiress, Princess Peggy, who found her prince after much trial through World War ll. Prince Nicolas remembered being a boy in Georgia, and Lenin coming to the house, for Lenin's mother was the laundress. Later, the Bolshevik Revoloution came along and the family lost everything. His father was shot by the Bolsheviks.
Their home in Victoria house was once described. "Walking inside used to be like walking into a big, golden, jewel-box," said one friend. Together, Peggy and Nicolas built a beautiful garden beneath their hilltop idyll which is a tribute to their love.
We had the loveliest sandwiches and scones after traipsing through the shrubberies trying to identify varying species. We felt the house alluded to an era of bygone glamour, one in which Greta Garbo lived, as though frozen in time. My friend said much of the city of Victoria was like this, that is to say, frozen in time, where stories about historic presences seem to linger.
Have been needing a rest. It was a fun farewell party with tributes, champagne, touching speeches, cake and laughter with dear friends, then breaking camp, and a final pulling up of stakes. (I know I just breezed through something huge with that sentence but one story at a time.)
A writer friend and I went for High Tea; it seemed a very Victoria thing to do. The Abkhazi Gardens was built by a Russian princess and wealthy heiress, Princess Peggy, who found her prince after much trial through World War ll. Prince Nicolas remembered being a boy in Georgia, and Lenin coming to the house, for Lenin's mother was the laundress. Later, the Bolshevik Revoloution came along and the family lost everything. His father was shot by the Bolsheviks.
Their home in Victoria house was once described. "Walking inside used to be like walking into a big, golden, jewel-box," said one friend. Together, Peggy and Nicolas built a beautiful garden beneath their hilltop idyll which is a tribute to their love.
We had the loveliest sandwiches and scones after traipsing through the shrubberies trying to identify varying species. We felt the house alluded to an era of bygone glamour, one in which Greta Garbo lived, as though frozen in time. My friend said much of the city of Victoria was like this, that is to say, frozen in time, where stories about historic presences seem to linger.
