Pages

Very important disclaimer

Please be advised that the contents of this blog are opinions only (my opinion, the opinions of my family and the opinions of anyone else directly or indirectly involed in this blog). This is not an accredited training blog, nor is it an accredited anything blog. If you (and you) do anything that this blog says, or don't do anything that this site says not to do, and you get injured, sick or killed, you cannot blame me or my family or blame anyone else directly or indirectly involved in this blog. By reading anything on this blog (including this message) you are saying that you are a person who makes thier own choices in life and does not hold the writer of this blog, the writers family or any one else that may be directly or indirectly involved in the production or writing of this blog, responsible for your stupid and irresponsible behaviors, injuries, sicknesses or deaths. With that said, please enjoy my fun blog.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Day 8–Victoria ALL Day! The Inner Harbour…

You have to spend a little money in Victoria to do it right. The inner harbour is so small and compressed and there is so much going on all the time, that if you don’t have a big window or balcony overlooking it you will miss amazing things.

We rented a room at the Victoria Regent. It is a resident hotel. People own each unit and the hotel operator rents the units out when you aren’t there. It’s a weird feeling at first to be living in someone else's home, but that feeling quickly subsides when very quickly, you feel right at home. If your home has a view like this, that is.

IMG_4286IMG_3973

It wouldn’t be anywhere near the same experience without the harbour view. I paid a little extra for the view that’s for sure. We booked a partial view room and I had them upgrade us to a full view. worth it.

I had a terrible sleep with a few coughing fits, as my weird night cold had reared it’s head. I did get those really good night shots tho…

IMG_4246B

The room comes with continental breakfast. No waffles like in Merritt, but pretty nice just the same. For an extra $2 each they will deliver your choices to your room. That was a good deal!

IMG_5312

After breakfast we walked around downtown chasing some cold medicine for me, then headed down Yates to hop on the Harbour Ferry. We spent a total of $74 in two days on these things. It gave us 6 ‘hops’ and our total ride time was somewhere north of 2 1/2 hours. It was incredible value. The pilots are very casual, very good at what they do and are incredible anecdotal tour guides. So many little nuances about some of the boats in harbour, the airplanes, what is going on that day, where to eat. Invaluable. Also the perspective from the water level is unmatched. We are meters from landing floatplanes, docking ships. At one point a flotilla of cool old BC forestry boats came in and we learned that there was an annual gathering of these vintage houseboats in the harbour.

They have no real schedule. They just drive around picking up people when they are standing on the designated docks and will take you where you want to go, even of they have to drop off others and a few stops before yours. This was always a bonus. We liked when we had to stop at many of the other spots before getting to our destination. We also purposely picked hops that had far destinations from where we were.

IMG_4318IMG_4321IMG_4336b

This is Jeanne Socrates’ boat. She took up sailing at 51 years old, and now at 67 she is attempted her most recent round the world unaided sail. She was unsuccessful, and arrived in Victoria on Wednesday Aug 1st. She was relaxing on deck each time we passed. Her website is quite compelling, and her most recent log post as she arrived in Victoria is here.
IMG_4338

One of the many cool BC Forestry Boats.
IMG_4458IMG_4482IMG_5098IMG_5127IMG_5149IMG_5188

Our final hop was quite late, and it was nice to puddle along the harbour when it was so quiet.
IMG_5248

Like I said, the perspective of being 1 foot off the water is an great one. I will plan to enjoy these fun little ferry’s each time we visit Victoria.
IMG_5285

Now. Between hops we would just explore wherever we got dropped off. The first one was over to Fishermans Wharf. It was still relatively early for lunch so we strolled around the cool floating homes and watched for sea life in the low tides around the docks.

IMG_4354IMG_4359IMG_4395IMG_4402IMG_4408IMG_4415

Lost items fished out of the harbour. I know I gripped my phone a little tighter on the docks…
IMG_4425IMG_4444

From the Wharf we headed over to main downtown docks for a walk around the flea market. It was busy and pretty warm, so we ended up with a hotdog and shave ice drink in a shady spot overlooking the marina and the Ledg.

IMG_4527_6_8_Detail

From there it was as short walk over to our one planned visit. Miniature World. I was there when I was Andrews age and I was anxious to get back. As usual for this trip the price seemed a little steep, but once you were in there, you felt like you got full value and more. Here are the highlights as per my camera. Click for larger images, it’s worth it. incredible detail and workmanship. These are all shot through the Plexiglas cases.

IMG_4579IMG_4554IMG_4568IMG_4573IMG_4578IMG_4582IMG_4586IMG_4611IMG_4618IMG_4622IMG_4628IMG_4633IMG_4645IMG_4650IMG_4651IMG_4653IMG_4655IMG_4659IMG_4666IMG_4647

From there we headed into downtown. As stop at Rogers’ Chocolate was required, of course.

IMG_4690_89_1_Detail

Picked up some gifts there and then walked up the street to a few gift shops and toy stores. IMG_4696IMG_4719

We were heading back to the hotel to re-energize for some more exploring when we decided to pop into Market Square. I love this spot and Andrew and I took a few artistic shots while Traci was shopping in a huge bead store.

IMG_4731_0_2_DetailIMG_4779_8_80_DetailIMG_4832_4_DetailIMG_4844_6_Detail`IMG_4868IMG_4896IMG_4898

After Traci was satisfied with her purchases, we headed back to the room for some patio time. This is the absolute best part of having a Harbour front room. You can go relax and never feel like you are missing out.

IMG_4913_stitchIMG_4933

We just played around in the room, had a couple refreshing drinks and made up our minds to head back to Fishermans Wharf to get some live crab to cook in our room. Thankfully the shop did the cooking and cracking for us. We had a couple punches left on our hop card, so we could get to the Wharf and back. The day was just so gorgeous we couldn’t get enough of being out and about. It worked out great as both hops had extended stops in downtown. We sure weren’t complaining. Think of the worst delay you ever had on a city bus on a hot stinky day. Then think of the opposite of that. That is what it’s like on the Harbour Taxi.

IMG_4970IMG_4972

Ours was the top big one. (3rd floor)
IMG_4986IMG_4993IMG_4999IMG_5044IMG_5063_2_DetailIMG_5072

This Harbour is all things all the time!
IMG_5190

Once we got back to the room with out giant bag of Crab and little chunk of Halibut for Andrew, we got the side dishes cooking, I walked over to a store for some condiments, then it was feast time. No pictures as it was that good. Andrew also now likes crab. He thinks they are super ugly, but really tasty. He even relates to them in the wild now… YUM he says!

After a much needed sit down in the room after supper, we took a walk across the big blue bridge. We hadn’t spent anytime over on the other side of the harbour, so we wanted to! It’s a different experience over there, almost like a different type of tourist stay there. There are also a lot of homeless people that hang out on that side, but it was still early enough that it wasn’t much of a bother.

IMG_5206IMG_5213IMG_5232IMG_5240

There was, however, a really crazy weird flash mob thing happening…

IMG_5214IMG_5208

That was pretty much our night. We do so much in the day, we end up wiped out and in bed early. We did take one last ride on the Harbour Taxi back to the hotel, as it was way past Andrews bedtime. It was completely perfect and amazing. We are having the time of our lives on this trip!

Next post: Victoria to Princeton: The heat is ON!

6 comments:

  1. Wow, Victoria is beautiful. Hey, you wanna buy a house in NC?

    Great pics as always. We're really looking forward to being in the area!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Can't thank you enough for posting so many great pics of your trip. Really, really excited about living so close to such a cool city—and country!

    ReplyDelete
  3. So glad you are enjoying the Harbour Ferries... they are so darn cute. Did you get to see them do a water ballet on a Sunday morning?

    ReplyDelete