Our final day. Hasn’t time flown/floated? Another late-ish start to the day, waking about 9am. The forecast was for sunshine once we arrived in Victoria at 2pm. This would make a change from the last 2 days we spent there in February when we had some very wet weather.
After breakfast, we went back to the cabin and packed a couple of our bags as we had an early start the next day to prepare for. We took a brief walk up to the bridge viewing deck to watch them “drive” the boat and much to Tracy’s surprise it wasn’t much like the deck of the Titantic. It actually looked a very nice relaxed place to work – I think when I come back in the after life I might be a captain of a ship.
We watched the boat come into dock at Victoria and then went down to disembark at 2pm. We took a cab to the inner harbor by the Empress hotel and it all looked very different in the sun compared to the grey of our previous visit. Being creatures of habit we walked back up the shopping street, went in the same shops, was surprised again at the price of a carved wooden box (it was still very nice though) and then headed down to the same pub for lunch. And then just to make sure I definitely was a creature of habit I had the same lunch – blackened halibut in a wrap – it was just as yummy as I remember it.
After lunch we walked back down the other side of the shopping street, went in the posh chocolate shop, bought some Victoria/Canada t-shirts and hoodies and then stopped for some mango ice-cream. Much to the boys disgust though they had sold out of mango so had to settle for strawberry. We then caught a taxi back through the very British streets and onto the ship.
We went back to the cabin and the boys got changed into the swimming shorts and then we went back up to the pool area. Another couple of quiet hours were spent watching the world go by and more cruise ships arrive until it started to get a little chilly at about 7:30pm and we went back down to the cabin.
From our balcony we then got a brilliant view of a thunder storm passing over Victoria, out across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and across to the Olympic peninsula. It was a truly spectacular storm and I must have taken about 150 photos trying to capture an image of some lightening. I finally got a few but they definitely didn’t do the storm justice. It took a long time deleting all the lightening-less pictures though!
With the boys showered and in their pj’s we ordered a pizza and spent our last evening in the room relaxing ahead of disembarking for the final time at 7am Saturday morning and crashing back into reality (Harry has a soccer tournament starting at 9:30am!).
The end of a fabulous vacation! Excellent choice Tracy!
A few more Victoria pictures here!