A Day at Victoria

This morning we woke up with the ship already docked at Victoria.  We could not see the city from our veranda, and we were about two miles from the Inner Harbor.  We had purchased a shore excursion for today to visit the Butchart Gardens, and we were scheduled to meet our shuttle at 10:00 a.m.  We decided to eat breakfast in the main dining room, and we were seated with two other couples.  They were all from Canada.  One couple lived on Vancouver island and were not too far from home.  They were meeting up with friends in Victoria.  The other couple lived in Vancouver.  I was surprised that we didn't meet many Americans.

After breakfast we left the ship and boarded our shuttle bus.  The driver took us through Victoria and pointed out several landmarks along the way.  It took us about 45 minutes to get to the Butchart Gardens which was longer than I expected.  It was another glorious sunny day and the gardens looked great.  Tulips were blooming everywhere.  We explored the Sunken Garden for quite a while and watched the Ross Fountain.  We walked past the Rose Carousel and the Dragon Fountain.  We went through the Japanese Garden and down to Butchart Cove.  We ended at the Italian Garden and the Main House.  Wendy went to the gift shop to find souvenirs while I bought us a two scoop ice cream cone to share.

We had to return to the shuttle bus by 1:00 p.m. and I felt that we were rushed.  I told the Holland America employee that it was too short of a visit.  We easily could have spent another hour there.  We returned to the ship and ate a late lunch of pizza on the Lido deck.  We rested for a bit and then decided to go explore Victoria.  We left the ship again and took a shuttle to downtown.  We walked through shops and past the Empress Hotel.  We took pictures of the Legislative Building and walked through the Totems at Thunderbird Park.  We returned to our shuttle stop by walking through the Empress Hotel.

We took a break in our cabin before dinner.  We had a reservation in the main dining room for 8:30 p.m.  When we arrived the serving crew was singing a farewell song to the guests.  We sat down at a table for two, and there weren't many people left.  We enjoyed our final cruise dinner.  We took a stroll around the ship and then returned to our cabin.  We packed our bags for the morning and went to bed.