Morning in Victoria then back to Vancouver

20^thSeptember 2019

Our last full day in Canada will be spent enjoying Victoria on Vancouver Island this morning before catching a ferry back to Vancouver for the night. We will be boarding the Ruby Princess tomorrow at midday, to commence our cruise.

First priority is breakfast, and during our walk last night we noticed a nice looking café located in and old house only a short walk from our hotel. The café, “Nourish”, turned out to be a great find, with a very healthy menu of fresh ingredients that tasted great.

With full tummies, we went for a last wander around the inner harbour, watched a ferry leave, and had a look at Parliament House in daylight.

Next it was of to The Royal BC Museum. We have been told this is one of the best museums in the country and we were not disappointed. Their feature display at the moment was on the Mayan Civilisation. And it was very well done.

However, the real strength of this museum is the Chronology of events that built British Columbia. The natural history section is fascinating, giving lots of more depth of meaning to the stunning scenery we have seen on our trip. 

The other main section covers the history of human occupation of BC, with a great section on The First Nation people, the arrival of European explorers, and the many events that shaped todays BC. Gold rushes, timber getting etc were all covered.

A native pit house (built over a pit dug in the ground)

Working model of a water wheel driven stamping mill for gold extraction

So realistic were the exhibits, you could almost feel like you we in the place being covered by the exhibit, where it was in the alpine forests, or in a small replica village complete with hotel that you could go into and look at facilities offered.

Overall, we were very glad we came here and ended up spending a lot more time than we expected. In the end we had to catch the 2pm ferry back to Vancouver, as we had spent too much time in the Museum to get the 1 pm.

On the walk back to our hotel we pass Parliament House and the Climate Mania team is hard at work holding a rally outside Parliament house.

Not all of the locals are impressed by the rally

We arrived at the terminal about 25 minutes before ferry departure, and it as very busy. We

were not sure we would get on this ferry, but fortunately they are huge and we managed a spot on the last deck loaded. Departure was delayed by 10 minutes, due to the number of vehicles they needed to get on board, so we arrived at Vancouver at 3.40pm, 10 minutes late.

The first 10 minutes or so of our drive went very smoothly, until we hit Friday afternoon peak hour traffic. We spent around 40 minutes on a cloverleaf trying to get on a different highway where some Einstein had decided merging five lanes intone was a great idea in peak hour. The rest of the trip was much better, but as we got closer to the city centre it got much busier. 

Finally approaching our hotel, we find ourselves on a road where we cannot make the left turn we need to turn into the hotel. Surrounding roads are a maze of one way streets and no left or right turns in peak periods, so it took another 15 minutes to wind our way back to our hotel. By now it is around 5.45 pm. 

The Wesslinks are also in town and Mike has been in touch to see if we would like to join them at a Japanese restaurant near their hotel, at 7 pm. We can just make it, so have a quick shower, leave out hotel at 6.45pm, and walk down to the waterfront from our hotel (where the restaurant is), and arrive right on time.

We had an enjoyable dinner, in a very, very busy restaurant. We will all catch up tomorrow on the ship.