Welcome to Canada!
This morning we headed to Victoria, B.C. on Vancouver Island and arrived about 10:00 am. On the way we saw huge fog banks hugging the coastline with the Olympic Mountains in the background. The lighthouse was a great picture through the fog. However when we arrived at Victoria terminal there was no fog and the sky was clear!
We’ve been here twice before and blogged about our visits to Butchart Gardens. So today there was no excursion. We just walked around the city.
About a 20 minute walk from the ship was Fisherman’s Wharf. There are quite a few restaurants here as well as tour kiosks. We decided to have lunch here and had a great Fish & Chips (here they serve cod instead of haddock like they do in the states).
At the end of the wharf we noticed there are permanently moored private houseboats like in Sausalito. Needless to say they are in a very pricey location.
They had one souvenir shop here also. On the outside they had some interesting wooden ducks representing the 4 winds that are prevalent around the island.
From the Wharf it was another half hour walk into the city. However, we noticed the checkered taxi boats and decided to take one of these as they had a stop in the downtown area. So we hopped on for a quick 10 minute ride.
The downtown stop was at the Empress hotel which is world famous for it’s high teas. Down the street from there we saw British Columbia’s Parliament Building (Victoria is the capital of the British Columbia province).
The rest of the day was spent doing a little shopping, getting a haircut, and having some great appetizers at the Cactus Club Cafe before we returned to the ship. Great day!