Victoria & Tall Ships

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Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo

Getting up at the crack of dawn is always easier when it’s to set off on an adventure. Our alarm went off at 4:30 Saturday morning, June 25. It was an especially short night because the previous night we had been out to see the Diana Krall concert, and didn’t hit the hay until after 1:30. We were aiming for the 6:30 ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo, with the intention of putting down the bed and sleeping on the ferry, but we ended up on one of those sloped ramps, so sleeping was out of the question.

Victoria

We arrived at our friend Orleen’s house in Victoria almost the same moment she did, around 11 am, having stopped for a leisurely breakfast in Nanaimo.

Saturday afternoon we went down to Wharf Street to scope out the tall ships. We had been hearing it was a zoo down there, and this was pretty accurate. We parked at Fisherman’s Wharf and walked to the tall ships. We managed to get onto Cuauhtemoc right away. She is a Mexican naval training ship, one of the two biggest at this Tall Ships event. Most important, we figured out what we probably needed to do to minimize waiting and walking and maximize the number of ships the next day: get there early!

Saturday evening we spent in the company of some of Orleen’s cousins, and Kath’s daughter Sarah, over a lovely dinner at the Oak Bay Marina. Then with aching feet, we turned in early to get caught up on our sleep.

Sunday morning dawned overcast and much cooler than Saturday. We got down to Wharf Street by 9:30, and managed to get a parking place only one block from the line-up to get in. The doors opened at 10:00 and we got onto the Pallada in short order, then went back to get tickets for several of the smaller ships docked in the same area, including a vessel which had been in Pirates of the Caribbean. By 12:30 we had seen everything we wanted, and we stopped to share a small plate of Ethiopian food from one of the vendors - yummy!

At that point, we decided a side trip was in order: Kath’s ears were hurting. So we stopped at a local clinic to discover she had an ear infection, and then at London Drugs to pick up some penicillin. Good thing this happened while were still in Victoria - it would have been less convenient to deal with this once we left town.

Tomorrow morning we leave for Pacific Rim, so we aren’t sure when we’ll be back on the internet - perhaps not for a few days.

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Photos

In the rigging
Looking up from the deck of the Russian vessel Pallada

Comments

[knana]

sleep and tall ships
Hi, great to see pictures and hear about your early start without much sleep. Glad you say the ships and got medication in a timely fashion. Kathy