We set off for the day to explore Victoria. We made our way to the British Columbia museum, calling at staples on the way to look at mini laptops. The museum was too expensive so we went to the legislative buildings next door which are very impressive – but they were shut! Our third option was the undersea gardens which take you 5 metres beneath the water where we saw lots of sea creatures including fish, wolf eels, crabs, starfish (which we got to stroke) and an Octopus! They had a theatre where you could sit and watch the creatures and then at certain times a diver comes along and brings some of them closer to glass for us to see. He also fed them, he had them trained to a bell so that they knew it was dinner time! Very interesting to watch and gave us a taster for what to expect in Australia!
We had a good mooch around town exploring all the different areas. It is a pretty town with nice features everywhere. We went across to fisherman’s wharf and walked around the harbour. There were some lovely looking boats!
Victoria’s Chinatown is the oldest in Canada and possibly the nicest one we’ve seen over here! There was a small market on as it was Sunday which had lots of lovely hand made things to buy – including a tea set which Lucy would have liked (it had ladybugs on and they were called bugs not birds!)! We indulged in some Chinese whilst there, it had to be done!
At 3pm we headed back to the museum as there is a tower outside with chimes at the top. On certain days, today being one of them, a musician climbs the stairs and plays the chimes. It seemed that no one else knew about it as they seemed oblivious to the music being played and where it came from!
We continued to mooch around town, observing all the pretty views and nice features. For the first times since we’ve been over here, we noticed the effect of Sunday opening hours, or should we say closing hours! Everywhere seemed to be shut by 6pm, not noticed this before, unless we’ve just never been out on a Sunday evening shopping!
It has been nice again today, although the wind was quite cold, perhaps because it was coming from the Pacific.
Hoping to have some time in the morning to look around some more before heading back to Vancouver.