Day 2 - hopping on and off in Victoria

When we got to Victoria this morning it was raining off and on but we thought we would brave the hop on hop off bus in order to get an overview of the city and to decide which sites/sights we wanted to spend time on. We were seated in the small covered front of the open top bus with the wind whistling in and stray cherry blossom settling momentarily on Jim's bald patch. By the time the full 90 minutes were up we were frozen to the core. After a brief hop off, for the driver to get a coffee, we hopped on again and 3 stops later hopped off at Spinnaker's Brewery Pub on the west bay for lunch and some hops for Jim in the form of Nutbrown beer. Seemingly there are a lot of micro breweries in Victoria but, thankfully, Jim has not found out where the others are or he would be seriously going to drink Canada dry! We had a lovely lunch in Spinnakers where a seat by the window where the sun was shining through helped to thaw us out after the freezing condition of the bus. We followed lunch with a walk on the westside walkway. There are lovely views from there and it would have been even better if it had been less cloudy when we would have been able to see the Olympic Mountains in washington State. as it was we got a very brief view of one snow-capped Olympic peak when the clouds shifted ever so slightly. We did, however, get a view of the floating houses of which we had seen only one yesterday. Yesterday's one was in a different wharf.

Floating village at Fisherman's wharf seen from West Bay.

We also saw an interesting sculpture made of driftwood:

Beside this was a throne for King and Queen Neptune, also made of driftwood. It was too awkwardly placed for us to get a photo though.

A heron in a tree on Westside walkway.

We hopped on again to hop off at St. Andrew's Cathedral. We quickly admired the stained glass windows but found little else to spend time on though maybe some prayers for good weather might not have gone amiss - ah well, lost opportunity! We did no more hopping but continued walking down to the wharf where we decided to go get a good look at the floating village at Fishermen's wharf. It was quite a walk but worth it to see the floating houses.

We had the added bonus of seeing 2 grey seals up close. They were obviously very tame and not in the least perturbed by people.

Lazily swimming.

Just lazy!

We have nothing to report from our return walk to the car or indeed from our return drive. The bus tour was well worth doing as we saw parts of the city that we would not have seen if we had been on foot all the time. We drove through Rockland which is known locally as nob hill because that is where the wealthy bankers live in beautiful mansions with beautiful gardens..We also learned a bit more than we would have without the tour. For instance we learned that Francis Rattenbury, an English immigrant of 25 won the contract to design the Parliament Buildings that Jim photographed yesterday. He also designed the splendid Empress Hotel which has seen Kings, Presidents and all sorts of other famous people stay there. That's probably where we would have stayed had we not already had an arrangement with Ted and Nancy!

There should be no trouble preparing dinner tonight as I have figured out the high tech cooker!