After a lovely two days at sea, we arrived today at beautiful Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. This was our first visit here, and we have had multiple family and friends tell us how great Victoria is… and we completely agree 💯!

Pier area w/ murals

The weather has definitely turned cold and reminded us that we are pretty far north now. The past three days have had high temperatures in the low 50s, with super cold winds and overnights in the low 40s. We brought a few clothing items for cold weather, but not enough for multiple days, and we had to hit the ship’s gift shop to stock up a bit. So, the excursion we signed up for while sitting at home all warm and snug in Florida seemed pretty laughable to us today when we arrived in Victoria. Yep- we picked a two hour bike ride around the city. But, we bundled up well and actually enjoyed our ride immensely. Our guide gave us tons of fun facts on Victoria, we saw wildlife (peacocks, a bald eagle, deer, raccoon, seals and sea lions), we enjoyed incredible trees and flowers, and I fell in love with this city. Must come back!

Victoria By Bike

Our guide Mike took us on a great 10 mile ride that left from the cruise pier and went around the shore and the downtown areas of Victoria.

Wildlife

One of our favorite parts of the ride today was all the wildlife we saw. For a town with a metro area population of over 400,000 people, it was surprising how much wildlife we saw! Of course, there are a ton of gardens and parks, which helps. They also get a lot of marine wildlife, including seals and sea lions (which we saw here), and orca and other whales (which we didn’t see here, but did see from the ship – see “Whale Watch” below!).

Beacon Hill Park

This little gem of a park had the most gorgeous flowers and trees, and a bunch of the wildlife shown above! It also houses the world’s largest freestanding totem pole (126 feet), that conveniently had a bald eagle atop it today!

Craigdarroch Castle

In middle of the residential streets of Victoria sits a beautiful castle, built by a coal baron Robert Dunsmuir in the late 1800s. It has since been owned and resided in by multiple owners (and is said to be quite the money pit!), and is now a national historic site.

Ohhh… these flowers!

This city is in bloom!! Simply spectacular.

More Victoria

The Mile 0 monument in Victoria, BC, marks the western start of the 8,000+ km Trans-Canada Highway. We hope to be able to travel the whole of it someday!

What’s for Lunch?

So we googled the foods Victoria is best known for (seafood, poutine, Nanaimo bars, beaver tails and craft beer among other things) and made it a quest to try a few. We had a pretty yummy lunch at Red Fish, Blue Fish at the harbor, and followed up with dessert (a Nanaimo bar and a beaver tails) a few hours later. So much for any calories burned on the bike ride! 😂

Overheard at the Beaver Tails pastry shop (no kidding). Young girl: “Do you make these with actual beaver tails?!” 😂😳😂

Chinatown

Victoria lists it’s Chinatown as the oldest in Canada. We spent a bit wandering the streets and shops and enjoying the narrow Fan Tan Alley.

The Empress Hotel

We ended our day at the beautiful Empress hotel across from the waterfront. It was built in the early 1900s by the Canadian Pacific Railway at the time that they were developing luxury hotels for the railway passengers to stay in. Although the Canadian RR obviously can’t make it to the island 😂, they thought passengers would come here by ferry as an end point after they traveled the railroad. They make their own gin here, and although I thought I was not a gin drinker, their indigo gin proved me wrong and I had a wonderful (and pretty- everything tastes better if it’s pretty!) cocktail while Rob had a local craft beer. A perfect ending to our day!

Whale Watch 👀

As beautiful as Victoria is, we can’t gloss over the past two days we spent at sea, particularly because they were highlighted by some incredible whale spotting! On the evening we left San Francisco, I mentioned in the previous blog that we spotted seals and sea lions in the water, plus a pod of playful dolphins next to our ship. Well, the days have kept up a high bar for the critter watching, and we have since spotted multiple whales from our decks! The best had to be Tuesday night, when our ship came across a whole pod of fin whales (according to the onboard workers), which we are told is very rare indeed! So exciting! We had like 40 of us plastered to the windows in the lounge, passengers and crew alike, all oohing and awwwwing every time one would spout. 😍🐳 The pictures below aren’t great, but I was too in the moment to focus on photography, so I make no apologies!

Oh Ship

Aside from being glued to the windows in hopes of seeing more whales, we are up to our usual shipboard shenanigans. We went to another Captain’s Club wine and mixology events (no wine stealing this time), attended the Senior Officer meet and greet, enjoyed some evening headliners, and attended and even participated in some game shows. We won a bit and lost a bit in the casino, and ate our way through some lovely food. Wednesday was “lobster night” on the ship, which is always a favorite.

Our cruise ends tomorrow (Friday) in Vancouver, B.C. We have enjoyed this beautiful city several times previously, and unfortunately this visit will just be a pass through as we head to the airport. That flight will take us to Las Vegas, and leads us to our land and road trip leg of this trip!! As always, thanks for adventuring with us.