Today was our “distant foreign port” stop of Victoria, British Columbia. We have been to Victoria twice before, but really love it, so we were happy to stop here again. I got up and went to get breakfast for everyone at the Solarium Cafe. I brought back breakfast while everyone got ready. We had a quick bite to eat, then we headed off the ship.
We didn’t have an excursion scheduled for the day, instead being content to walk around the downtown area. We were docked at the Ogden Point Cruise Terminal, which is about a mile or so away from the downtown area. Luckily, there are handy markings on the path to show you which way to go.
Here is the path we followed to get to the downtown area. It is really easy to navigate through a mostly residential area.
After a brief walk (with beautiful weather in the lower sixties), we arrived at the Parliament building for the Legislative Assembly for British Columbia. This is a beautiful building set on a fantastic lawn. We took a couple of pictures and then headed over to the Royal British Columbia Museum.
We have been to the Museum twice before, so we decided to skip the visit to the museum and instead just headed into the gift shop. Nancy had lost a bet to my younger daughter, so it was time to pay up. She won a stuffed bear (whichever one she wanted) in the bet and she wanted to collect it at the museum gift shop. We looked around the gift shop for about 15 minutes while she collected her prize.
After leaving the gift shop, we headed past the Empress Hotel, which is the other iconic building in Victoria along with the Parliament building. High tea is supposed to be quite the event at the Empress, but we were just passing by on our way to do some shopping.
After we passed by the Empress, we went into a number of shops to look around. We didn’t really buy much other than a few snacks. We eventually stopped to get some coffee and use the wifi to update all the apps on our phones. After topping up on caffeine, we headed back out to look in various shops and explore the port area.
Around noon, we decided to duck into Bard and Banker for some lunch. This restaurant was opened in a former bank. The lunch (and beer) was really good.
After our lunch, the girls and I were ready to head back to the ship. Nancy wanted a longer walk, so we decided to split up. She went on a monster walk around Victoria while the girls and I headed back to the ship. We ended up walking along the shore for a bit, which gave us a great view of the Ovation.
We got back to the ship and went to the room to drop off our bags. Unfortunately, waiting in our room was our departure luggage tags and letter. It indicated that our bags had to be out by 10 pm, which was going to be tough with our dinner being at 8 pm. I gave Nancy a call to check on her return time. She was almost back to the ship, so we would eventually meet back in the room to get everything ready.
After dropping off our stuff, the girls and I headed back to bumper cars to get in another ride before the cruise ended.
Nancy got back on board, so we went to meet up with her. We had to get back to the room to start packing up the room. We had dinner scheduled for Wonderland at 8 pm and our bags had to be out by 10 pm, so we were a bit tight on time. Nancy made pretty good time packing our bags and finished by 6:30 pm or so. We decided to head over to Windjammer to get some of the pies they had set out for dessert that we had seen the night before. Unfortunately, when we got there, they had only put out cakes. Nancy was really disappointed, although the cakes looked great.
We decided to skip dessert and just head over to Wonderland for dinner. While we liked the food at Wonderland from a visual standpoint, not everybody did. Our youngest daughter didn’t enjoy the taste of some of the items and ended up going back to the room early. The rest of us finished dinner, and then went back to the room to put our bags out quickly before they collected them all. Once we set the bags out and checked on our daughter (who was doing fine), we went back to the shops one last time on the cruise.
We didn’t end up getting anything else, and eventually headed back to the room to get some sleep.
Tomorrow, we would be headed off the ship!
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