Sore feet in Victoria!

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August 29th 2011

Published: August 30th 2011

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macandcaz

Part of the First Nations mural

Royal Bank of Canada Building, Vancouver

Continuing from last blog:

Sat 27 Aug: we ate dinner at Robson Sushi again, as it was so good first time round, "all you can eat" is an excellent way to try out different Japanese food as it's not just sushi on offer and finally Robson Street is only a few minutes stroll from the hotel.

Sun 28 Aug: caught a seaplane to Victoria, on Vancouver Island, at 8.00 a.m. - a fabulous 35 minute flight, smooth take-off and landing (I'd imagine due to the water). The plane was small, just a few rows of seats, 2 on one side and 1 on the other. With flying at a lower altitude than an ordinary plane, the views were much clearer; rows and rows of tree tunks in the water (can anyone tell me why? Heaps of them, purposefully laid out), tiny islands, plenty of greenery, sailboats of every size and shape and of course buildings varying from tiny to skyscrapers.

We ended up walking the distance from downtown to the hotel, approx 3.2 kms, five times (Yes, FIVE TIMES!!) today! First from the harbour on arrival to drop off the backpacks, then to town to explore and back,

Tree trunks in water

From the seaplane on the way to Victoria

then later at night to eat dinner and back!

Mostly we wandered (getting to be a habit with us!) - around some of the shops, the harbour area, Empress Hotel, government building, a wonderful arts and craft market, Bastion Square, Market Square, Johnson Street Bridge (looks like it used to have a section of railway track that would have been used in times gone by but is now no longer utilised), Chinatown..... Also picked up our boarding passes for the ferry to Seattle on Tuesday. Ate dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant - Green Leaf - excellent food again. Finished the evening off with some Granville Island Hefeweizen and extremely sore feet!

Mon 29 Aug: a more sensible start to the day today - caught the free shuttle to downtown and got chatting to a couple from north of Auckland on it - seems they had snow too this winter. Did yet more walking - all the way down Douglas Street to the coast then followed the coastline past Ogden Point and the breakwater to Fishermans Wharf. There we caught a water taxi across to West Bay Marina, had some lunch then walked mostly along the coastline again all

Our seaplane

In Victoria Harbour

the way back to the hotel - past Coffin Island Point, Lime Bay, Songhees Point, then following the start og the Galloping Goose Trail up the Upper Harbour and over Selkirk Trestle (a footbridge) to the Travelodge (via Tim's again for some wicked hot chocolate!). Probably did about 10kms + today. It was cooler than yesterday but we still caught the sun, probably the breeze from the water just made it feel cooler.

Pretty much the two days in Victoria have been spent following all or parts of some of the self-guided walks, which has been an excellent way to see a lot in a short timeframe. Yesterday we followed most of the "Secret Passages" walk; today we did chunks of 4 others - Juan de Fuca, Harbour View, Westsong Walkway and Upper Harbour. Definitely recommended.

So now we're taking it easy for the rest of the day. Tomorrow it's USA here we come, apparently the place to shop!

Just a couple of observations - all toilet paper here seems to be single ply, I've never come across that before. And houseboats are called float homes.

Will try to upload more photos, depends on connection speed