Victoria Day One...

My little Victoria get away came and went.  Those 4 days were so full of doing stuff, and walking, and laughing, and eating, and eating some more that I can barely remember what all took place. Thankfully I had a journal with me and was lucid enough to write in it every night. I'll not bore you with the account of the $$ spent in each journal entry, but I will bore you with all that we did.

Seattle SIL and Mrs. Braspir (Henceforth to be known as the Queen PopUp - until I forget that I renamed her.) and I took of at the butt crack of dawn and hopped on the Victoria Clipper. (Did you know it's called the Clipper because it "clipped" time off the ferry ride to Victoria? Me neither. Learned something on our voyage.

Let me back up a bit. This trip was the annual Hunting Wives trip.  You may recall in past years we went to Leavenworth and San Fran.  This year we needed to stay somewhat close to home and so we opted to go to Victoria.  As the years have progressed, each of us stand out to own a task. Something we're good at and so it becomes our assignment.  For example, Queen PopUp is usually really good at navigating - especially public transportation.  I am usually good at cooking. So I opt to bring the snacks for the trip. 
You might recall last year I made up these HEFTY Muffalatas for Leavenworth.  I bragged about them for days before the trip. Then promptly left them behind.

Turns out I'm not so great on the remembering the snacks. This year I said I'd bring the snacks for the voyage over to Victoria.  We were leaving at the butt crack of dawn and I wasn't sure what, if any, decent snacks the Clipper would have. So I bought some mini cinnamon rolls and pistachios to bring along for the ride.  And I promptly left them behind. Der.

Anyhow, back to the trip. So we hopped on the Clipper and off we went. Victoria is about 2 hours 45 minutes from Seattle.  And it was looking like a gorgeous day leaving Seattle.

 By the time we arrived in Victoria the sky had opened up and was down pouring buckets of water.  We hopped into a taxi and found our way to our hotel, the James Bay Inn.

Turns out the James Bay in is a historical landmark and apparently on the route for the carriage ghost tours in Victoria. 

We stashed our stuff, went and had lunch in the pub downstairs and then headed out. As I mentioned it was pouring.  We had to exchange $$ so I figured I'd also run in and buy an umbrella - since I didn't pack one.  All the chores done we were off.  We wanted to see the Royal British Museum and perhaps a tour of the Parliament building. First stop, Parliament. The rain was coming down so hard that as we turned the corner to past the Parliament building to get the the museum, Queen PopUp said,"I don't care if they're doing a tour right now, we're going in." So we went in.

Their Parliament building is beautiful.  I'd give you all the history about it, but that's more boring than my blog. If you wanna read all about it, you can...here.  Anyhow, as we squeaked in - all the water on our tenny's and the nicely polished floor - we saw they were starting a tour in 10 minutes. Phew. We sat and dried off a bit. 

Its almost the first building you see when you come into the Inner Harbor. Looming over the city with its ancient structure. But I find it a fascinating building. My next trip to Victoria I'm going to walk all around that building and photograph it more.

Once inside I was challenged with low light for photos. Thankfully there wasn't a whole lot to photography - yet I still took about a hundred. This is the dome from the inside. I love dome shots.  They seem so third dimensional to me. 

We had to shoosh Puck. He was getting a bit loud during the tour, what with all his quacking and all.

Their government structure is different from the US. I know, "Thank you Captain Obvious." It appeared to be based off the UK government, which makes sense since the UK owns Victoria in BRITISH Columbia.  Anyhow, what I found amusing about this photo was that they face each other during their debates and discussions. It would make it WAY too easy to throw something across the room.

Then of course you have the building at night. I found it much more interesting at night. All those little light bulbs.  We chatted about who was responsible for changing them, and how that person may have to be fired because we found some out. Its just so beautiful to me at night there.

This is looking through the Inner Harbor back to the Parliament building.

After the tour in the Parliament building, we were dry enough to venture out again. So off we went to the Royal British Museum. Now, I've seen a lot of museums in my time...a LOT of them. And frankly I get bored real quickly in museums.

Queen PopUp had been to the museum before and she, along with another friend, had told me it was the museum to end all museums.  Needless to say I was skeptical.

Can I just say, "OMG!"?  It was by far one of THE best museums I had ever been too.

Entrance into the museum. Boring on the outside, but fun on the inside.

The displays were all so interactive - and what I mean by that is that they were like replicas of big things. It gave you perspective on scenes along with history. I loved it.

When I got home and looked at my photos I couldn't figure out where I had been when I took this one. It looked to me like I was on a beach somewhere and these swans just happened to walk right by me.  This is one of the displays there. They had an entire section on water, beach, marine stuff. They even had a little tide pool with a happy volunteer telling you about all the fish, etc in the tide pool.

Though all of it was fascinating. The First Nation exhibit was by far my favorite. I love native art and hearing the history and stories of the Native Americans (They call them the First Nation).  The first room you enter appeared to be a show room where we suspected they put on rituals for tourist...none happening during the off season apparently. Then you enter into this room that has about 8 totem poles throughout it. All around the edges were mini rooms with artifacts and stories and history. Just fascinating.

Finally as you work your way through you enter into City Hally. This exhibit is a town they've set up. A town from the early days. There are store fronts all along this main street they've set up. In each store front they have all sorts of artifacts that would have been sold in that store. Then they had a whole area that was set up like a saw mill, an area for gold mining, a pirate ship (which by the way stunk to high heaven. I later found out they actually pump in smells into this exhibit and in the pirate ship they pumped in pine tar as a smell.)  This exhibit was sensational. I know I've said that about all the exhibits, but they all were just fantastic.  If you're ever in Victoria, take a couple hours and do...this...museum.

We spent the remainder of the day wondering through Victoria. It's a great little city.  We stopped at a coffee shop to have a drink and a snack and to rest our little foot-sees...

We asked the barista in this coffee shop if there were any good steak houses around she'd recommend.  She thought a moment and then said, "Well there was only one across the street." We asked specifically about a steak house that started with a B because Seattle SIL had been to one in that area that started with a B.  The barista said, "Nope. Nothing like that around here."

So we left and stepped out into the sunshine that had come out.  Looking DIRECTLY across from the coffee shop there stood the steak house called Barclays.  Which is where we had dinner that night.

Later in the weekend we discovered a number of steak houses in that little area, we figured she must not have been from around there.

Tomorrow I'll wow you with a blog entry about Butchart Gardens.  It was beautiful.  I'll give you a preview so you'll be sure to come back.