Sun. 27th September ’26
I decide to go old school today and prepare our itinerary myself and ignore Claude. I fancied catching one of the cute water taxis to Chinatown and then meander our way back to the hotel for our noon checkout. My research shows the first taxi is at 10am so we are ready and waiting and there is a taxi ready to depart, so we jump on. We head past the sea planes and it is a short hop to Chinatown. As we pull into the dock I see there are hot tub boats available for hire, quite bizarre, but looks fun if we had more time.
Chinatown in Victoria, apparently, was the first in Canada. As we saw a week or so ago many Chinese came over to Canada to help build the Trans-Canada Railway in the 1800s. Once this was complete a number of Chinese settled in Victoria. A lovely place to settle. Chinatown is not a large area and very sleepy at this early hour on a Sunday. The highlight is Fan Tan Alley, a small walkway full of quirky (not necessarily Chinese) shops, but being Sunday nowhere seems to open until 11am. That is easy on the wallet!
Other areas of cities we like to explore are markets, but those a shut too. We then turn our attention to churches and play ‘try and find the church’ we can see out of our hotel window. Yep, found that. As no buildings in Canada are over a few hundred years old, they are not in the same league as Europe. Also being Sunday there were services in progress so we did not like to enter. Even though our ferry back to the mainland is not until 4pm I always find myself clock watching.
After checking out and collecting our car we do pick an item from Claude’s itinerary and head to Beacon Hill park, an area south of town heading down to the beach and a popular place for a stroll. The view is pretty enough from the top of the (small compared to some of our walks) hill, before we descend to the coast and the famous Mile Zero monument – marking the start of the Trans-Canada highway. I wonder if we are going to get to see the other end when we are in Nova Scotia? We are more intrigued by yet another statue of Terry Fox, who was a tireless fundraiser for cancer research. The final area of the park to investigate is the lake with stone bridge and fountains which we only gave a cursory look as lunch was calling.
We are early to the ferry port and despite our usual joke that they have a spot ready for us by the bulkhead (Ref a trip to Spain where we were literally the last vehicle off) we were actually near the front and one of the first cars on and hence off. The advantage of this was that we were early on deck and had a front row seat. I was ready with my long lens just in case we were lucky enough to see an orca, but again, no joy. The route the ferry took was however interesting as it weaved through the islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland. If you have ever studied the border between Canada and USA a small part of promontory south of Vancouver city is American and cut off from the rest of its country. The ferry also crossed through American waters.
Enough diversion, we cannot put off packing any longer as we have managed to spread our stuff all over the car and tomorrow we fly to Montreal, so we need to be Houdini and cram everything into our two cases – not an easy task! No room for anymore souvenirs or gifts. We have really enjoyed British Columbia and a bit of Alberta and are now looking forward to Québec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island (of Anne of Green Gables fame) and a little of Nova Scotia.