Thursday

Today we are back in Canada and docking in the port of Victoria. We were told that Victoria is a beautiful city full of beautiful gardens. There was a number of activities on offer but we opted for a simple tour of the city which included an hour at the Craigdarroch Castle.

And true to what we had heard it is a lovely city with lots of beautiful buildings and abundance of beautiful parks and gardens with hanging flower baskets everywhere. While the city tour was informative I think I would have been just as happy to go for a wander and soak in the ambience of the city. In fact after the tour that’s exactly what we did. The bus driver agreed to drop us back down town where we wandered the streets and found a beautiful little cafe called Nautical Nellies for lunch – I’d highly recommend the Crab Rolls they were amazing.! Then from there we strolled back to the ship along the harbour taking in all the sights along the way.

The Craigdarroch Castle was fascinating and clearly an exercise in building something over-the-top to show that you have succeeded only to have something that is hard to sell or move on in the future. The history of the castle is full of stories of how it was used over the years, including a hospital after World War 1, the school board, and a school of music just to name a few. At one point they couldn’t sell the castle so they subdivided the grounds into residential blocks and all block owners went into a raffle with the winner getting the castle.

Here are a few photos to show the level of detail that has been gone into the castle especially in the flooring, lead lighting, and general woodwork around the castle.

For more information on the castle see the following link.

So why world famous you ask…

In our tour the bus driver mentioned a number of places that were world famous and after a straw poll no one had heard of any of them (yes the sample size was very small – okay there was four of us). It came to be an in-joke and then after our lunch docket said that the cafe was world famous … it just stuck.

Well this is the last time we get on the ship as we are returning to Seattle tonight and our cruise will be over. This has been an excellent cruise and I really enjoy sailing with Royal Caribbean as they really take care of you. I would also recommend this particular cruise as it is a nice mix of chilling on the ship and shore time in an amazing part of the world.

Stampin’ Up! put on a great event and I love being a part of these trips. Not only because we see some amazing places but because it is such a great company to be associated with and because they have such a great heart and passion for what they do. We also walk away from these trips with friends from all over the world.

From here we start part two of our American adventure.