Saturday, May 25, 2019. Victoria, BC Canada

Saturday, May 25, 2019. Victoria, British Columbia Canada

We had breakfast together in the dining room and then spread out for our last day of activities for the cruise.  Ben and Janet, Dave and George, joined by Dino teamed up for the morning trivia, which we won handily with a score of 18/20.  The second place team had 15.  We won coasters, which Janet gave away to other passengers.  

Franklin had participated in the paper airplane toss, but missed the target.  He also did a Minute to Win It Challenge, which involved trying to get a balloon into a large paper trash bag without using his hands and not allowing it to touch the ground.  He was unsuccessful, but it made for some humorous video.  

We rendezvoused for lunch at noon in the dining room after Ben went for a short run on the treadmills.  We had our last trivia for the cruise but missed winning by 1 point.  

As the ship approached Victoria, we noticed a lot of sailboats in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  It turns out that it was the Swiftsure Yacht race, a part of the America’s Cup series.  

We had dinner after naps just as the ship was approaching Victoria, and then we disembarked for our excursions.  The ship arrived in Victoria at 7PM. Our excursion was scheduled to depart at 7:20PM, but it took a long time to disembark the ship, so we ended up leaving the dock area at 8PM.  The driver was entertaining and informative, but our first stop at 8:45PM was at the butterfly garden.  By then, the sun was setting and it was getting dark rapidly.  The butterfly garden was nice, but it seemed like most of the butterflies were sleeping.  They did have some interesting insect displays, including a large colony of leaf cutter ants with see-through burrows in plexiglas boxes.  There were also some huge cock roaches and beetles.  The most interesting specimens were the Atlas moths, which were the size of birds. 

The Butterfly Gardens were just around the corner from Buchart Gardens, but by the time we got through the turnstiles, it was well past night fall, and the gardens were quite dark aside from pathway lighting and some accent lighting.  It gave you an idea of the scope of the gardens, and we were able to walk through them in under an hour, but you really couldn’t appreciate the flowers because it was so dark.  The water fountain did put on a colorful lighted display, but there were no fireworks.  When we had signed up for the excursion, we weren’t aware that we would be arriving after sunset, so that was a disappointment.  

The buses got back to the ship right at 11PM.  There was a huge line at the International cafe, which was the only food venue open at that time.  The soup gets put away at 10pm, and they had largely sold out of their sandwiches except for a few ham and tuna sandwiches.  Ben used the last of his coffee card punches on a decaf mocha, while Janet converted some of hers to hot chocolates for Dave and Franklin.  

The week did go by quickly. We will sail past Whidbey Island and our home in the dark on our way to Seattle’s waterfront.  The ship will not have to go very fast to make it the last 81 miles by morning.