Seattle/Victoria Trip {Day 4}

Day four started in Victoria and ended in Seattle, with lots of activities in between.  We woke up to a bit of rain in Victoria, which was really the only rain we saw the whole trip.  It burned off really quickly and was a non-issue.  We went to breakfast at a place called John's Cafe.  We split the eggs benedict and waffle with cream cheese sauce.  You know I was happy that I was somewhere where there was royal news on the front page of the paper...

 

After breakfast we walked up the street to City Hall

 

 

 

Then we walked to China Town.

 

 

 

 

We continued to walk down Government Street with the intent of doing a little shopping.  Most stores weren't open yet.  It seems they like to get a late start and close early in Victoria!  Once we got closer to the Inner Harbour, the stores were starting to open.  We both bought caps, which came in very handy for our noon activity!

 

Our next stop was the Royal BC Museum which had a special exhibit called "Race to the End of the Earth" about the British and Norwegian race to be the first to the South Pole.

The view of Parliament from the museum

 

 

After the museum, we walked across the street and checked out of the hotel.  Here is a topiary at the hotel...

 

Then we grabbed lunch at a deli and headed to the Prince of Whales for our whale watch trip.  The water was super rough due to the high winds, which was just awesome considering we had 3 hours on the water for the whale watch and another 3 on the ferry back to Seattle!

 

Here were some views as we headed out from the harbour...

 

The airport

 

Fisherman's Wharf

(Can you imagine living here?  We were told these went for about $400,000)

 

A plane that had just landed and was headed for the airport

 

Then we headed out to Race Rocks Lighthouse in the Straight of Juan de Fuca



Here we saw elephant seals

 

 

some birds taking flight

and some harbor seals

Remember when I said in my previous post that they wanted us to take the zodiac tour instead of the bigger boat tour and we declined?  This is the zodiac they wanted to put us on.

 

Then it was time to go find some whales!

There are 3 pods that live in the area each summer.  They are called pods J, K, and L.

We located Pods J & L.  They were intermixed in a couple of locations

 

 

You can see the water was a little rough.  It made trying to find the whales a little more difficult.

They come up for air about 4 times, and then they dive and swim under water for about 4 minutes, so then you have to look for them to rise again.

 

 At this point, we were just off the San Juan Islands, which are actually part of Washington State.

 

Woo-hoo!

It was so cold!  I had a long sleeve t-shirt, a sweat shirt, and a pull-over on, and was still cold.  I was super sad my gloves were packed at the hotel.  It was so much fun though!

Here is a yacht that is sitting in the harbour.  The Athenia is the 4th largest sailing yacht in the world.

For less glamorous transportation, but I think so cute, you can take a water taxi

 

After we got back to dry land, we had about 3 hours before we had to catch the ferry back to Seattle.  There were several things we wanted to do, but we wanted to maximize our time in Victoria, so we decided to do the double decker bus tour of the city so that we could get a good overview of everything.  It left right from our hotel, and was leaving about 5 minutes after we walked up, so it was perfect.

 

 

We saw China Town again

The Chinese School for Children

 

 

We saw City Hall again too

 

We saw some of the pretty churches in Victoria. 

This is Christ Church Cathedral, an Anglican church.

 

Parliament again

We drove by a park where we saw some local wildlife

 

This is Entrance Island with its lighthouse and you can see the Olympic Mountains peeking out over the clouds.

 

After we were done with the tour, we did a little more shopping (hit up the Roots store, etc. that was closed earlier in the day), grabbed a quick bite, then collected our bags and headed to the Ferry.

 

We arrived back to Seattle about 9:30 p.m.  We collected our bags at the Edgewater and headed for a different hotel, The Inn at the Market.  I'll post more on the Inn in my next post, but here is the view from their 5th floor deck...

 

Stay tuned for Day 5!