Victoria

The Empress Hotel in Victoria, British Columbia

My mother was the inspiration for Precious Husband taking me to Alaska.  Mom had been a few years ago and told us about sitting on her patio drinking coffee and watching the sea life around her.  That sounded so wonderful to me - so relaxing and peaceful.

So of course the first morning on the ship I had to order breakfast in and have my coffee on my veranda.  It was great even though we never saw any sea life around us (others did though).

The other event that I had looked forward to was definitely Victoria, B.C. and it was beautiful.  Because of the ship's schedule Victoria turns out to be an evening excursion.  We arrived about 6 PM and had to be back by midnight.  The ships are very punctual and we heard that if you are not back on ship in time they will leave you!  We made it a point to be punctual too.

Back to Victoria - it was wonderful.  Because we did not know what to do or see we chose to take a tour by peddle car.  We shared a 4 passenger cart with a couple that we got acquainted with on the ship and we had a young man on a bicycle  that pulled us around the city.  We wanted to tour the Empress Garden Hotel so he accommodated us and gave us a quick guided tour - wonderful.  On a couple of the hills I so wanted to get off and push out of sheer pity for the sweet young man on the bicycle.  Oh my.

This is a city I would enjoy visiting again so we could get off the bike and wonder the side streets in search of a special little teacup or teapot of course.

The gardens we toured were simply beautiful.  See the tree below?  Look closely

I made the picture big - do you see him?

Waldo, did you find him?

Like I said, we had such a good time.