Victoria - August 6th

Early Thursday morning we headed into Seattle to catch the Victoria Clipper up to Victoria, B.C. We sat with a group of 6 seniors who were part of a big tour group. They had just got done with Seattle and were also heading up to Victoria. They had received box breakfasts as part of their tour package, but none of them could finish all of it, so they gave us all their extra fruit cups and exotic yogurts. I wish that we could have gotten pictures of them because they were adorable! I hope that I still have that kind of spunk and sense of adventure when I am their age.

Victoria is a fun little city. We enjoyed walking through town and along the pier where they have lots of street entertainers and vendors.

Around Town
Here are some of the sights we saw around the city.
Darth Vader playing the violin. Unfortunately, as you might be able to tell from Jayson's expression, he wasn't a very impressive violinist. That's probably why he has to wear a costume.
This lady was amazing. We decided to have her paint our last name as our souvenir from our trip. She seriously whipped it out in like 3 minutes! You can see her at work in the video below.


Walking along the waterfront. Here is a view of the famous Empress Hotel (where we actually got to stay! more pictures later). This is the hotel where the Queen stays when she comes to visit from England.
Here is the Parliament building. We thought it was really funny that this lady on her scooter drove into the picture right as our timer went off.
At night they light up the Parliament building. You might be able to tell in this picture that they just turned the lights on.
We found an awesome hat shop in town. They had some more normal hats as well, but Jayson thought he would try his hand at the wizard look. He is also wearing his "Iron Man" sweatshirt (the logo always glows like that in pictures)
A funny little statue that we found on the street.
Mmmm, gelato! Check out this gorgeous gelato presentation.
We couldn't resist getting some.
Here is one of the street entertainers that we saw. Pretty impressive.


Butchart Gardens
Our first afternoon there we went out to visit the Butchart Gardens. They are a historic site in Canada and have been around for over 100 years! The gardens were started after Mrs. Butchart decided to turn her husband's old limestone quarry into something a little more beautiful. They have several different gardens now and they are absolutely stunning!

Some garden art that was perfect for Jayson.
These hanging flower baskets were gorgeous.
The "Sunken Garden". This is the site of the old limestone quarry.
I love these flowers. They are like natures fireworks.

Even the garbage cans have little gardens on them!
An unexpected surprise. We ran into my cousins who live in Utah of all places! They were actually coming back from an Alaskan cruise and the gardens were their last stop on their way home. What are the odds though that we would be there at the same time as them and in the exact same part of the garden as them? It's a small world after all.
Jayson loved watching this cool fountain.
On the stepping stones in the Japanese garden.
The Italian garden
Check out the size of this leaf!

Stayed tuned for more of The Empress Hotel and Whale Watching!