Today we have a long stop in the port of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada. We were scheduled to arrive at 8:00 AM, and will be in port until 11:59 PM, when we will depart and head the short distance over to Vancouver, where we will arrive at 8:00 AM the next morning. This is the last full day of the cruise.
We did not get up early, realizing that we had all day here in port. The ship was late getting through customs anyway, and they were not allowing passengers off until about 8:45 AM anyway. After getting ready we headed to the buffet for breakfast. It was going to be another great weather day, sunny, mild winds, and about 70 degrees. That is unusually warm for this time of year here.
Floating Houses in Fisherman’s Wharf
After breakfast, we pack up all of our gear, got off the ship, and picked up a good city map at the welcome station in the port.
We opted for the 30 minute walk into town that passed by their version of Fisherman’s Wharf. It was mostly a walkway along the waterfront, a few blocks near the port were not seafront, but most of the walkway was along some type of water frontage.
The first stop was at what was called Fisherman’s Wharf. It was very interesting. there were some regular docks, with boats of all types and sizes, and then there were four piers that had various sized floating building tied up to them. Some were stores, but many were personal residences. They were all constructed on some large plastic pontoons. They were all designed differently also. They had running water, and were hooked to some type of sewer system, and looked to have small tanks that periodically pumped into a sewer line that ran along the dock.
Victoria Harbor Area
After looking at the floating houses, we continued our walk to the main harbor area of Victoria. We passed by two ferry companies, one with high speed ferries for only people, and the other was a larger ship for both passengers, and trucks and cars. Both were for service to and from Seattle.We next came to what had once been the local steamship company terminal, and was now a restaurant.
Water Taxis
All along the way we saw lots of the small little water taxis. We had planned to ride one of them on a tour up to an area called the gorge. We found out that tickets were available on the other end of the harbor, so we headed that way. There were a lot of street vendors set up along the seawall selling various hand made items.
We purchased our tickets for the one hour tour, but the next scheduled departure was an hour away. We walked around more of the waterfront, and found the docks where all of the seaplanes were tied up. We had seen several of them leaving and arriving, there were a couple of tours in seaplanes, but many of them were for passenger service to nearby Seattle and Vancouver.
Seaplanes
We headed back to the little tour boats, and found out that they were going to do a tour before our designated 12:30 PM, so we boarded our small boat with two other couples and the “captain”.
It was an interesting tour, we learned about some of the history of Victoria, and saw some of the old buildings that were still along the waterfront. Unfortunately, there were also some ugly industrial sites along the waterfront, one for metal recycling, one was for cement and stone processing for loading onto barges.
Houses in The Gorge
We then entered the area called the Gorge. It was not much of an elevated gorge, but there were some nice homes along the shoreline. It had an interesting history of being a really nice area at one time, then became polluted to the point that swimming was banned for about 60 years. The guide said it was from a lot of stuff being dumped along the shoreline, but there had also been several large shipbuilding companies nearby that were now closed, and those always seem to have some type of pollution from painting ship bottoms. However, after a lot of effort from many of the locals, the area was declares safe for swimming just a few years ago.
It was a good tour, nothing great. It was not as scenic as we had hoped, but we did learn a lot about Victoria.
Craigdarroch Castle in Victoria
Once we returned to port, we decided to walk into the main town, and head over to a sight called the Craigdarroch Castle. The map said it was less than 2 km, so we decided to walk. It was a little farther and hilly that we thought, and although we could see it when we started, as we got closer, we had to pull our our map to find the side street the castle. It was a nice day and we got to see more of the city on the way. We were a little disappointed when we got there, it was more like small house than a castle. We took some photos from the outside, and them walked to the entrance. It was about $14.00 per person for the self guided tour, which we opted not to do. It seemed pricy for what was there.
Empress Hotel in Victoria
We headed back into town, and the walk seemed less difficult and far, one because we knew where we were going, and it was mostly downhill. Once back into town, we stopped in a few stores, then headed to a restaurant on the waterfront for a late lunch.
After lunch, we went to take some pictures of the Empress Hotel, an old but elegant (read expensive) hotel form the old steamship days. We went into the lobby, and it was an elegant hotel, and the grounds were really well landscaped with flowers.
Empress Hotel Grounds
From there, we headed over the Legislative Building, used for, you guessed it, government offices. It had been designed and built in 1897. We did not go inside, just walked around the grounds. It is lit up at night with thousands of lights outlining the roof lines. We though we might come back after dark and take some photos since we are not leaving until midnight.
Legislative Building
We had had enough walking by this time, but still had the 30 minute walk back to the port. We stopped once more at Fisherman’s Wharf, thinking there might be some stores, but other than the houses, the only businesses there were eating establishments. We watched the car/truck ferry leave, and also watched a couple of the seaplanes land and take off from the end of the docks at Fisherman’s Wharf.
We then walked back to the ship, and by the tie we got there, we realized that the walk back after dark was probably not going to happen, we were just too tired.
Seaplane Taking Off
We got a couple of refreshments from the Calypso Bar, and then headed to the hot tubs near the spa for a hot soak to help our tired legs and feet. We had also decided not to go to the dining room tonight, we just wanted to relax, and we also still had to pack our clothes.
After the hot tub, we went back tot he room and proceeded to pack, at least about 90%. We tried to segregate the clothes that we no longer would need, such as the formal clothes we used on the cruise, and would not need to use for the next four nights on Vancouver and Seattle. We got it all to fit, but the different packing technique was a little more tricky than we anticipated.
After packing, we showered and got dressed for dinner it he buffet. They had some good selections, but we were not very hungry since we had such a late lunch in the harbor.
We had a couple more refreshments, then headed to the finals of the Karaoke. There were six finalists, and the show was pretty good. We walked around a little more on the ship before retiring for the night. We have an early wake up call tomorrow morning since our scheduled time to walk of the ship in Vancouver is 7:30 AM