Victoria, British Columbia Blog
Most of the day today will be an at sea day, with the ship being in port at Victoria, British Columbia from 6:30 PM to 11:30 PM. We got a lot of sleep last night after being seasick most of the day yesterday. I got up early and walked the ship to film our Norwegian Sun ship tour for Youtube. I noticed I only filmed vertically when I got back to our room, I’ll have to go over it again tomorrow. I was up so incredibly early I was able to go to the gym for a while before waking Ben up for breakfast.
This was only the second time we were able to go to the Seven Seas dining room for breakfast. The rest of the days we had been so busy we only made it as far as the buffet. I am crazy for a good eggs benedict, and Ben is the same for biscuits and gravy. We don’t have a plan for the day and hope to just wander and relax. We were in the room contemplating our next move when we spotted some whales from our balcony. I had just enough time to grab my camera and take a couple pictures before they disappeared again. This one encounter made having our balcony worth it.
There was an ice carving demonstration on the pool deck, and we made our way up to the hot tubs with enough time to grab a spot. Coming out of being sea sick for the last day and a half has us both feeling a certain kind of way. The hot tubs seemed to give us a little bit more life, and the Pina Colada and Strawberry Daiquiri we picked up on the way back to the room should do the rest of the job. We had our drinks on the balcony as we sailed by the Olympic Peninsula. The drinks didn’t fend off the sadness as we packed our bags and cleaned up our room. We have to put our bags outside of our stateroom before we get off the ship in Victoria. This complicates things a little bit, so we’ll have to tote our dirty clothes from tonight around, tomorrow. We made the choice to have dinner before we got off the ship, which in theory would have been cutting it close for timing. Ben had the New York Strip again, and I tried the Mahi Mahi. I’ve been trying to get something new every day, and not something I would normally order at home.
The ship arrived in Victoria on time, but customs wouldn’t clear us to officially dock. After 6:45 everyone was starting to get very irritated. We lined up at a time that we thought would put us in the front of the line, and it did, until they told everyone to leave the fourth floor and the stairwells. It turned into madness. People were cutting lines, forming clusters, and starting to get crowded. They let us off the ship around 7:30 and literally everyone was mad. We already had limited time in Victoria and that just cut it down to an almost unusable amount of time. Thankfully we only had a self guided walking tour planned.
Our first stop was Fisherman’s Wharf. We didn’t stop to get anything to drink, we just viewed the houseboats and kept moving. We walked by the Fairmont Empress, Government Buildings, and Market Square. Most businesses closed on the earlier side and limited our other options on what to do. We walked all the way to Whistle Buoy for a couple of beers. We didn’t have much time left to walk back to the ship, and ended up getting back on the ship around 11:15.
The madness from earlier continued as we got back on the ship. The dining rooms and the buffets were closed, and everyone on the ship was looking for food. We stopped into the Sports Bar, where people were sitting out in the Great Outdoors seating area waiting on their food. There were so many people there that Ben ordered, and I headed back to the room. By the time he got back I was already pretty much asleep.