Colorado Cruiser: Day 9

Friday Jun 10, 2016 Victoria BC

This is the first day since last Sunday that we didn't have something going on the first thing in the morning. There has been something to see or do, first thing in the morning for days.

So I decided to sleep in. I made it to 9:10 before I finally had to get up or go crazy. Even Nannette got up before me and that's really crazy. But since we had also crossed a time zone and lost an hour it wasn't really all that bad.

Nan had breakfast delivered and I went up one level to the Lido deck to find breakfast. Surprise, surprise, I had a mushroom, ham, onion, and tomato omelette with bacon and sausage on the side. That's the same as I've had nearly every morning of this trip. I didn't see any of the others at the buffet and I figure they had all eaten much earlier.

I texted John to see where he was. He said he was by the pool with Shauna and Eric. A minute later, Angela walked up and asked what was going on. I told her John's message. She went to check but couldn't find him. I texted John again and now he was in his room. Rather than continue to run all over, John asked where I was and came there. Nan showed up a few minutes later. We've seen people carrying FRS radios around and thought that we should do that on the next cruise rather than constantly searching for each other.

We finally gathered everyone up and sat for a few hands of Skip Bo and some good laughs.

For lunch they had Indian food at the Asian counter. It smelled heavenly. I grabbed a bowl of rice, chicken tika masala and lamb vindaloo. It wasn't the best Indian Ive ever had but it was quite good. I decided against a 2nd bowl and went for the Sushi rolls instead.

We kept playing until it was time for the afternoon variety show. The magician performed allot of card and coin tricks with a camera closeup on his hands. He was funny and pretty good despite a few minor mistakes.

Next was a husband and wife team doing Beatles songs. They were very good and she was way too happy but good as well. They put on a pretty good series of songs that was fun to listen to.

After the show, Nan and I went to our room to pre-pack our luggage. We have to leave our bags outside our rooms by 1:00am, so we wanted to pack before we went on our excursion. I bought some vacuum bags that you roll up rather than having to actually use a vacuum. We got almost everything packed. After that we went up to the Crows nest and watched the US San Juan Islands pass on our right, and Canada's Vancouver Island on our left. For the Twilight fans out there, I saw Port Angeles slide past us before we turned in toward Victoria.

At 4:30 I headed to the Lido deck to find another table. Nan, Angela, and John joined me for an early dinner before heading on our excursion onto the Island. Shauna and Eric weren't going on the excursion so they opted to rest and have a later dinner.

When they announced that we were fully docked and free to leave the ship, we headed down to the gangway. I figured we'd have to go through a customs line and get a stamp in our passports, but they just scanned our cruise cards and waved us on in. We strolled through Canadian customs with several hundred other people and weren't slowed at all. We had filled in customs forms earlier in the week and that must have cleared the entire ship.

Once through customs we headed to the large line of buses and started searching for our bus to take us to "Butchart Gardens". We found one entitled "Enchanting Butchart Gardens" and when I made a comment about "Where'd the Enchanting" part come from, our bus driver said "That would be me". He was pretty funny and kept us laughing on our one hour drive out of the city to the gardens.

I've been to Butchart Gardens before. It was 2 years ago (almost exactly) that my buddy Mike and I went on a week long tour of Vancouver, Whistler, Tofino, and Victoria. I blogged about it.

The driver told us the story of the gardens. The husband operated a cement company and the gardens are what used to be the limestone quarry. She decided to plant a garden and began gathering flowers and other plants from all over the world. The southern half of Vancouver island has a very temperate climate so they can grow nearly everything including bananas and other tropical plants, so the gardens did well with everything she planted.

We arrived at the gardens just after 7:00. We were the first bus to arrive and the driver said there would be at least 9 more buses. The driver told us to be back by 9:10 or even earlier if we wanted a longer tour of Victoria Downtown area. The parking lot was completely empty of cars and when I asked the ticket taker, she said they were opening the gardens late just for the cruise ships.

It was nearing twilight and the sky was overcast but it was still very bright, almost too bright for many of the photos we took. I led the way since I'd been here before. I headed straight for the sunken garden, that part of the garden that is right inside the quarry. That first view coming around the corner and staring down into the garden is breathtaking. I got the oos and aaas that I'd been hoping for from the others.

We took a few pictures then I tried to setup the tripod for a photo, but there was nowhere to set it that was high enough for a good photo. My one attempt nearly ended with the camera taking a 6 foot dive onto concrete so eventually I relented and let nice lady take a picture for us. It was poorly composed and blown out which is what I often get when others take pictures for me. That's why I usually try to setup the tripod myself, so I can't grumble when they come out bad.

We took the stairs down about 60 feet to the floor of the gardens and started wandering. It is very beautiful to walk the pathways through the flower beds, ponds, streams, hedges, and hanging vines. We only had 2 hours so we didn't linger much but just kept a steady shamble through the garden.

Nan wanted a picture with every patch of yellow flowers we passed. She loves yellow and I've always tried to buy her yellow flowers whenever I do buy them.

After a couple false turns down dead ends we got to the far end. There were fountains in a pool down below us. They kept changing patterns and, if it was darker, they'd have changed colors too. We took our pictures, then opted to walk back through the the part of the sunken garden we hadn't seen rather than taking the high trail out and along the side. There were more oos and aas at every turn until we eventually had to climb the same stairs back out.

Leaving the sunken garden, I pushed us toward the rose garden. I figured if there was a 2nd best place in Butchart, that was it. The roses were in full bloom and as pretty as I remember them from last time. We spent a long time looking at all the different varieties and colors of roses. We slowly worked our way along until we heard someone say "look at the deer". We turned, and sure enough, there were 2 fawns wandering through the high rose bushes nibbling at the leaves.

We watched them for a while and since no one was overly concerned we figure it must just be a hazard of a beautiful garden, deer are going to get in and eat the plants.

From the rose garden we entered the Japanese garden. There aren't many flowers here. It's about the harmony and guiding the plants to grow a certain way. We walked through and kept descending until we reached a little bay where the gardens provide boat tours. It was all closed and we'd seen a whole lot of water and beautiful views this last week so we didn't stay long.

We climbed back up and began making our way toward the entrance. We passed the start fountain and the Italian garden. We took pictures by a specially constructed indoor garden, then the ladies went into the gift shop. John and I took a seat on some benches to wait for them.

We made it to the bus right at 9:00 hoping that everyone else had returned early as well, but only about half had come back so far. We took our seats and watched people slowly straggle in until 9:10 when the driver came on board to count. He said we were still missing 2 people and he was going to wait 5 minutes for them, then put them on another bus. They never did show and we pulled out at 9:15. The driver asked us to look around for any flailing arms but we saw none, so he left them.

On the way back he told us more of Victoria's history and how the southern part of Vancouver island is actually below the 39th parallel (is that right?) and should have been part of the US, but was given to Canada since no one thought it was anything special. It's some of the best land and climate in the whole region and the US really screwed up.

We drove around the downtown area and heard stories of the various buildings and men who built them. On the bridge, the bus stopped and he let us off to take some pictures of the sunset and the various buildings in the area. This time the bus driver didn't count and we nearly left 2 more people who'd decided to walk across the street to see something. They barely managed to get back on before he closed the doors and left them.

He drove us back to the boat, and once again, the customs agents just asked to see our cruise ID's and waved us out of the country.

It was after 10:00 and we were all a bit peckish so we went to the Lido deck. Nan got some french bread pizza which I turned my nose up to, until I took a bit and found it was quite good. I got some cheese and bread. We all sat there slumped in our chairs until someone finally said "I guess it's time to go to bed".

Nan and I finished packing and put our bags out before dropping into bed.

Butchart Gardens