It has been another beautiful sunny day but it is very deceiving. As soon as we went outside we found it was really cold, mainly because of a light wind. We walked into the main shopping area & down to the historic Market Square before walking up to the Craigdarroch Castle. It is a beautiful home built in 1890 for Robert Dunsmuir and his family. He was an extremely wealthy British coal baron who passed away before the house was completed. His wife Joan & their 3 daughters lived there until Joan's death in 1908. At that time the castle was sold off & was used as a military hospital, then the Victoria College and Victoria Conservatory of Music before finally becoming the museum it is today. Many of the original furnishings have been re-bought for the house and others restored. The house was 4 levels - we went up on the family side & came down on the servants side. There was a marked difference in the quality of furnishings from one side to the other.
There was a lot of beautiful wood paneling and stained glass windows on every floor. There were also a lot of musical instruments around - pianos, melodian, guitars, banjo, mandolin. Many of the Dunsmuir children were musically gifted.
The house was decorated in Victorian style for Christmas. There were even original decorations on one of the trees. It looked beautiful all decked out.
Unfortunately the other residents of the castle moved and changed rooms around so there is currently no kitchen in the house. There are also public bathrooms which they are eventually hoping to relocate into a house next door. It will take a lot of time & money to completely restore it to the original house.
We caught the bus back down into the city and found a deli for lunch. After that we wandered through some more shops & headed back to the hotel to layer up some more before getting on the bus to Butchart Gardens.
The bus picked us up outside the hotel & it was about a 40min drive to the gardens.
Robert & Jennie Butchart came to Victoria from Ontario to establish a limestone quarry. They built a family home nearby & Jennie started planting a garden. Once the quarry was exhausted she decided to make it a place of beauty. She arranged for loads of top soil to be brought in by horse & cart & it eventually became the Sunken Garden. Between 1906 -1929 Jennie created a Japanese garden, an Italian garden & a rose garden. People came from all over to see the gardens & Jennie would always welcome them in & make tea for them. One year she made 29 000 cups of tea. There was no entrance fee for many years.
Jennie & Robert travelled extensively getting seeds & cuttings for the garden. Jennie was getting a reputation for her garden worldwide. They took one trip to England to get a songbird but the bird died before they were due to return. They had a choice to return without a bird or delay their return & source another bird. It is lucky they chose to wait for another bird as their return trip was on the Titanic.
The gardens were all done up for Christmas. They start putting up the lights on 1st October for the opening on 1st December. There are an enormous amount of lights - on trees, on bushes, flower beds, lawns and buildings. There is also the Twelve Days of Christmas scattered through the gardens. We found them all except the partridge in a pear tree. I meant to go back & find it before the bus came but I forgot. The 4 calling birds had a cockatoo in the display which was a nice touch!
Photos do not do justice to the lights. My camera doesn't do night photos well so I'll just ave to remember it. The gardens would be beautiful in Spring/Summer when they are in full bloom.
On the way back to town the bus driver went through some streets we hadn't seen & gave us some commentary. We went through Chinatown which used to be the second largest in North America but is now just one block. The most interesting part was the narrowest shopping strip in North America. It was just 39 inches wide but had shop fronts. Pretty cute.
We have booked a shuttle to pick us up tomorrow morning & take us to the airport for our flight to Seattle. Our Canadian leg has come to an end. It has been excellent & I would love to see more of the country. Top temperature in Victoria tomorrow is 3 degrees. I wonder what Seattle will be??