City of Victoria

Thursday 2nd June We arrived into the port of the city of Victoria around 8am. Heather and I had booked into a tour of the famous Butchant Gardens and a tour of Craigdarroch Castle. The boys had decided to make their own way into the town and look around. Heather and I loved the gardens and wished we could have spent longer there. The garden was built by the wife of a wealthy  business man who owned a limestone quarry. After all the limestone had been excavated his wife started to work on the garden. The old quarry was turned into a beautiful "sunken garden" area. Over he years the garden was extended and eventually given to the city of Victoria. It has over 500 people who work in different areas of the gardens. From the gardens, we were taken Craigdarroch Castle. This beautiful castle was built in the 1890s for the Dunsmuir family. Robert Dunsmuir was  wealthy coal barron but unfortunately he died before the castle was completed but his wife and several of his children and orphaned grandchildren lived in the home. Many of the rooms had been beautifully restored back to their original use as the castle had become a Military hospital during the first World War, then a college and finally an administration building for the education. It was decided to restore it back to a castle in 1969. We loved our visit here but it was too brief (50 minutes) to take everything in. We were taken back to the ship and met up with the boys. They had had quite an exciting day too. Paul and I headed into town by foot, found some wifi and did some up dating and then checked out fishing reels for Paul. We found a shop out of town, many reels (and guns!) but nothing to Paul's liking. Returned to town by bus, met a really friendly bus driver and "RainMan" who travelled buses daily. He knew all the facts and figures about just about anything including our ship!

In the evening we went to the final show at the theatre. It was a culmination of all the good things from the previous shows, including singing, dancing and a brilliant comedian. Quite a few of the service staff were also brought up on stage so the audience could say thank you. Lights, music, singing and streamers were there at the finale in great amounts.