Vancouver May 2005 - Weekend in Victoria

What can I say but WOW!!! This was one of my most enjoyable weekends ever!!!! The weather was beautiful – had an excellent tour guide who knew a lot about the history of BC – found some great books – and saw WHALES!!!! I know some of you have been to Victoria and told me how wonderful it is and you were so RIGHT!!!

Ended up booking a package tour with Grayline. They picked me up at hotel Saturday morning in VC – took me via ferry to Victoria, stopping for 1 ½ hour at Butchart Gardens, dropped me at hotel in Victoria and then on Sunday the whale watching expedition and the return to Vancouver via seaplane was all part of the package.

Now, I have been on a number of ferries in New York and Europe – even drove my car onto one in Louisiana – but I have never been on one like this!!! It wasn’t what I think of as a ferry – it was a SHIP!! In addition to foot traffic and bicycles, it holds 500 cars and I don’t know how many tour buses – I counted at least 20 – and two semis. It is 7 decks high and it was really just like being in a building – I didn’t even go up to the top deck to go outside – way too crowded.

Butchart Gardens were beautiful, of course. But, you know, the Dallas Arboretum and the Azalea Gardens in Muskogee are just as beautiful. Still it was a nice diversion after being on the bus and ferry for two hours.

Got to my hotel about 4:00 and started exploring the city. Unfortunately, because it is so slow and laid back there, all the museums and galleries were closing by 5 or 6. So, I just walked for a couple of hours exploring and taking pictures. There was a bookstore I had read about, Munros, that I was eager to check out and did get there before it closed. I had already built it up in my mind so that I was expecting it to replace CITY LIGHTS (San Francisco) in my heart. ‘Fraid not, though. It was a great store, but what made it great was not the books per se, but the building itself. There is some fabulous architecture in Victoria and this is one example. I did buy three books – one on the castles of Victoria, another of ghost stories of British Columbia, and one on the Dunsmuirs – one of the founding families of Victoria. Dunsmuir is a Scottish name – I was surprised to see quite a bit of Scottish and some Irish influence there. And the story of the Dunsmuirs rivals the Kennedy saga any day!!!!

Headed back to the hotel about dark – rested for about an hour – opted against venturing out to dinner and just ate there instead. I’m glad I did – they had a fabulous seafood chowder!!! After dinner I was going to walk down to the harbor – about 4 blocks – started that way, but had second thoughts. Guess I’m just not as gutsy about wandering around an unfamiliar city after dark as I used to be. But, next to the hotel there was a pub with a live band – playing really great music from the 60s and 70s – didn’t even have to go in – just sat on a bench outside listening and watching the young people inside dancing. It was below street level so it was kind of neat to watch. (One nice thing about both Victoria and Vancouver is that there are benches EVERYWHERE).

Sunday morning, first stop was the Royal British Columbia Museum. This is probably the BEST museum I have ever been in (well, that shipwreck one Mom and Dad and I went to in KC was pretty good, too ). First thing when you walk in the door is John Lennon’s Rolls Royce – the one he had painted in psychedelic colors and patterns which created such a controversy. There are several floors and different exhibits, but the best is the floor about the FIRST NATIONS (the Indians who were the first inhabitants of Canada). It was awesome with original totem poles, burial masks, and a HUGE lodge. There is a natural history gallery with dioramas of a seacoast, rainforest, etc.

Walked around downtown some more looking at the parliament buildings – some really fabulous architecture in this city!!!!! Victoria was first a trading post and then a gold rush town and a naval base. It is the capital of British Columbia, but in a lot of way it’s just a sleepy little provincial town. I had heard it is very British, but I didn’t really get that sense. It’s very touristy, of course but not overbearingly so like a lot of places. If you take away the Pacific Ocean, the architecture and the RBC museum, then you’ve got a town similar to Hot Springs or Estes Park.

Oh, and the Empress Hotel – absolutely gorgeous!!!! Frommer’s says they ought to charge for the view. Built in 1908 right on the harbor – the definition of opulence. (If I hadn’t fallen down on the job in planning this weekend, I would have known that there was a jazz band playing in the lounge Saturday and could have gone over there.) Darn, darn, darn!!!!! http://www.fairmont.com/FA/en/CDA/Home/Hotels/AboutHotel/CDHotelHomePage/0,2993,property%25255Fseq%253D100128,00.html


Next I scooted over to Craigdarroch Castle – http://www.craigdarrochcastle.com/ - built by the aforementioned Dunsmuirs – it is STUNNING!!!! Four stories, 39 rooms, 87 stairs to the top where there is a spectacular view of the city. And the furnishings!!!! Just what you would expect in a Victorian home – beautiful carpets – stained glass windows – paintings – sculptures, but yet from the OUTSIDE – there is no mistaking that it is a Scottish castle. And the interesting thing about it is that it is not outside of town like I expected – its right in the middle of a residential area just a few blocks from downtown. There were a number of castles built in Victoria in late 1800s and early 1900s. Not all are still standing, but the book I bought on castles was very interesting. One of the side stories was about Carey Castle – the youngest daughter (yes, daughter) was a longtime lover of Tallulah Bankhead.

After the castle, I headed back over to the pub from the night before for a lunch of fish and chips. Then, the crowning point of the whole weekend. WHALE WATCHING!!!! It was GREAT!!!! The day was beautiful – and while they tell you they can’t guarantee that you will see a whale (after all, it isn’t Sea World – it’s the Pacific Ocean), they said it was the perfect day for it. And boy, was it. We saw TWENTY-THREE!!!! And it was awesome – it was a whole family – from a 94 year old grandmother to a cub born last November. The amazing thing is that the captains of the boats know them all my name and can tell them apart - something to do with their fins. I took a lot of pictures, but it wasn’t easy. Soon as you set your camera down, here comes one and you miss it. And then, of course, you get so busy trying to get pictures that you don’t really enjoy seeing them. They were just going in and out of the water (respirating is what it is called) – sometime more than one – and we saw one chasing salmon (they eat about 300 POUNDS a day and prefer the King Salmon). Once, several came out at once – it was awesome. And then the mother was bouncing the baby on her nose!!!!! There were about 15 different whale watching crafts out there – and all the captains talked to each other telling them where they were – so here we all were going round and round to get a good look – it was cool. Of course, there are rules – the boats have to stay a certain distance away from the whales – in 25 years of whale watching in that area a boat has never hit a whale. We were about a hundred yards from them. If you want to see the boat I was on, click on this link http://www.5starwhales.com/cruisers.html - it’s the BLACKFIN on the right. And, yes, I had to wear one of those big orange suits.

After getting back to Victoria, I had about an hour to grab some dinner and catch my flight back to Vancouver on the seaplane. If you’ve never been on a seaplane, think American Eagle, but half the size or maybe even smaller. It was kind of nice, though, because the sun was just beginning to set so it was very pretty. But it’s kind of strange to look at the window and see someone UNTYING the plane and then to taxi along the water. I thought landing would be strange, but it really didn’t feel that much different than a regular plane.


Well, that’s all for now. I want to go back to Victoria sometime – see some more museums and castles and there is a cemetery I read about but didn’t have time to see. Here are a couple of pictures – will send more later.

For those of you who don’t know, I will not be coming back to Vancouver. My client is postponing the second part of this project. So, I am going to take a few weeks to catch up on some other work and then go see John David in Virginia (he is stationed at Ft. Lee) before I start my next project.