Day 4 - Trip to Victoria

Victoria is just a short ferry ride away from Port Angeles. We took the passenger-only ferry which has a travel time of about 1.5 hours. We landed in Victoria at about 9:30am. After proceeding through immigrations - yes, Canada is another country - we walked around the Inner Harbour. During the day (not too early) there are vendors peddling various arts & crafts and souvenirs along the boardwalk of the Inner Harbour. They were just arriving as we were strolling along admiring some of the boats in dock. We paid a visit to the visitor's center (our standard thing to do...). We investigated renting motor scooters, for the day, to make the trip out to Butchart Gardens, but decided instead to take the Greyline bus. In hind-sight this was a very good decision. The gardens are quite a distance from the city and motor scooters would not have been welcome on the freeway. The bus depot is only a block away from the Inner Harbor. You can purchase various tour tickets with Grey Line and other tour operators. We had our tickets in hand in no time and we were on our way. The bus was very comfortable (air conditioned), with big windows for sight-seeing. It is about a 35 minute ride North of Victoria to Butchart Gardens. We sat back and enjoyed the fact that someone else was doing the driving for us. 

Butchart Gardens is a splendid attraction. The gardens encompass a large area and you can easily spend half a day wandering the varied paths through well kept gardens of all sorts. I'm don't know a lot about gardening, but I have never seen so many different kinds of roses. They come in just about every color of the rainbow. The weather was very warm with only a few clouds in the sky, so the shade trees were welcome. Many of the paths wind around shady ponds with small streams and waterfalls. These are just as important to the ambiance of the gardens as the multitude of flowers and shrubs. We visited on a Tuesday and we were very surprised at the number of people visiting the gardens. On a day less crowded, the gardens would be even more enjoyable. We spent several hours winding through the gardens in a virtually continuous line of tourists. Then we had a nice lunch in the snack bar before boarding our bus and returning to the city. The tickets we bought included the round trip and there was bus service back to the city just about every hour.

We wandered around the city a bit, window shopping, and then walked out to Craigdarroch Castle (quite a long walk - but we wanted to get some exercise). We did not opt to pay the entrance fee to tour the inside of the castle. Instead we meandered around the outside for a bit and took a break in the shade. Then we returned to the city for an iced mocha drink and walked around Thunderbird Park before heading back to catch our ferry. As we were doing so, we found large crowds gathering and some protests going on in front of the large Parliament building complex. Then canons were rolled out by military personnel and the next thing we knew... BOOM! I wish I would have known to cover my ears! The canons fired many times signaling the opening of the Parliament session. It was an interesting coincidence that we just happened to be there!

Getting caught up in the excitement of the Parliament opening made us a little late for the ferry. We still made it aboard, but the only seats left were on the top (open) deck. It was about 5:30pm and the setting sun was not providing as much warmth. The ride was a little chilly and very windy. Luckily we had brought our rain gear, so we were able to face the elements without getting too wet or cold.

After getting back to Port Angeles, we grabbed some Chinese food take-out and relaxed in the hotel room for the rest of the evening.