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Old 28 Apr 20, 08:02 PM  
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Scruffette
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O Can-aska - Day 12 - Victoria

O Can-aska - Day 12

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Tuesday 10th September 2019 - Victoria

We were ready for a day of exploring Victoria and I was really excited for our whale watching tour.

First it was time to sample the ‘breakfast’ part of our bed and breakfast stay.

Breakfast started at 8.30am, we were keen to get started with our day, so arrived a few minutes early. Unfortunately, when they said breakfast started at 8.30am, this meant they started cooking at that point. We did pass the time eating a freshly cooked fruit muffin each.

For breakfast, Ollie had the Eggs Benedict – This standard comes alive with Marketa’s special homemade cheese sauce. Poached eggs over ham on an English crumpet with cheese sauce and garnished with herbs and spices. Fresh fruit on the side.



I had the Pancakes - Go on, spoil yourself you deserve it! Pancakes with seasonal fresh fruit, whipped cream and real Canadian Maple syrup – These were nice and served with a generous helping of fruit, although weirdly the last bite I had tasted a bit salty.



We were soon on our way for today’s adventures. The first stop was the Breakwater, where we walked down to the lighthouse.







It looks a bit grey today, but it was actually really bright out.

Some divers were out collecting samples –



We saw the sun dial at Ogden point –





Then we walked along the water to Beacon Hill Park.







In Beacon Hill Park we saw the world’s tallest free standing Totem Pole –







The garden’s here were beautiful, with lots of peacocks about.

















This sign managed to capture my normal mindset –



We continued our walk up to Thunderbird Park, where I particularly enjoyed this happy looking building –





Ahead of our whale watching tour, we had planned for a midday lunch at Jam Café, just the other side of china town.



There’s also a Jam Café in Vancouver – we saw it in some vlogs and knew we wanted to try it. On weekends there can be quite a wait to be seated, but on a Tuesday lunchtime we were fine, although it was pretty full (it’s only small inside).



They serve some amazing looking brunch creations here, but we decided to go with some of the more lunch based options.

Ollie went for a Broken Ladder apple cider ($9). I was originally just planning on water, but Ollie convinced me to get a hot chocolate ($5), which was a good decision.



To eat, we both went for the King Chicken ($17) – A buttermilk fried chicken breast, sugar-cured bacon, cheddar, tomato, lettuce and chipotle aioli on a pretzel bun



However, we both swapped the chipotle aioli for a blue cheese aioli, which came with another option on the menu. I felt like this burger was made for me with all my favourites – fried chicken, blue cheese and pretzels! They do ask that you don’t ask for modifications at peak times, but were fine to accommodate this for us today. We also both swapped out the fries for tater tots for $3.

We both really loved our burgers and were really happy with our choices.

We had plenty of time before our whale watching tour, so thought we could squeeze in some pudding before then. Our pudding stop had to be Chocolats Favoris again – we were still dreaming of our ice cream from yesterday!



We shared a ‘medium’ sized cone again (although it’s very tall for a medium) and went for cookies and cream ($6.71). We didn’t go ‘kooky’ this time, so our cone was toping-less. The ice cream inside wasn’t quite as well set, meaning I made even more of a mess than yesterday!





It was then time to head over and check in for whale watching. We paid our balance and sat in the sun and waited. We were the first of our tour group to turn up, but enjoyed watching otters while waiting for our tour time.





At about 14.40 our tour guide introduced himself and we got our survival suits on. I was very excited for these – basically a large extra warm onesie!

Our vessel for today was the BC Tika – a 12 seater fully open boat. We picked this boat for a slightly more ‘thrilling’ journey, with better visibility than a closed in boat.





Our guide announced we could board our boat. Now, I don’t think I’ve any seen anyone move as quickly in my life. There were 4 Germans in our group, and one of the men did their best Usain Bolt impression to secure the front two rows for their party. I wasn’t too impressed by this.

We set sail just before 3pm. We intentionally booked the afternoon tour rather than the morning tour – I’d read that they use the locations where they found whales in the morning tour to help make the afternoon tours as efficient as possible.







Our guide announced that they had seen Humpbacks this morning, but hadn’t seen orcas for the second day running. This was disappointing, but obviously you can’t control things like this.

The humpback spotted this morning was quite far away, it took us until around 4.30pm to reach this spot.

Around this time, our guide spotted a whale far away in the distance and pointed it out. No one in the boat saw this – the sceptical part of me thought this was to cover the ‘guaranteed whale spotting’ part of the booking!

Eventually, this humpback came up again. What was really irritating were the Germans in the front row standing up at this point. If you’re in the front row, there really is no need to stand up and block the view of everyone else. I’m not the tallest, so felt at a real disadvantage. Ollie swapped seats with me, to try and give me a better view.



We stuck around for the Humpback to resurface again, and this time I had a better view. The boat fell silent when we spotted the whale! Very quickly we had to start making our journey back, as it had taken us quite a long time to get here.









I think I might have dozed off a little bit on our way back from this area towards Victoria, as it was quite a long journey back (those travel sickness tablets again making me quite snoozy!)

We stopped off on the way back to see some seals and sea lions – you could definitely smell them before you saw them!






url=https://www.thedibb.co.uk/p/2iQ4H21][/url]

Our tour ended about 6.15pm, and I reluctantly handed back my survival suit!

Whale watching was one of the things I was most looking forward to on this trip. I know these things can go either way, but I really hoped to see more than one Humpback on our trip. It was still great to see the whale in the wild, and the boat journey itself was fun, it just felt like a really long journey for such a quick viewing period. On their website and in reviews it often mentions multiple sightings of several whales in each trip, so I suppose it’s just luck of the draw on the day. I don’t think that whale watching is out of my system yet – I’d love the opportunity to try again one day.
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Old 28 Apr 20, 08:03 PM  
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After the tour, we spent the next couple of hours walking around Victoria and looking in plenty of gift shops! I picked up some authentic Canadian maple syrup as my brother for a gift and we got the usual magnet as well. It was lovely just having a nice wander around.



We also couldn’t resist another stop at our favourite – Chocolate Favoris (3 times in 2 days…). This time, we wanted to try their take on a sweet poutine, which was made up of funnel cake fries, topped with soft serve ice cream, chocolate and marshmallows. We chose the dulce de leche flavour and went ‘kooky’– which added cream fudge bits, caramel coulis and crunchy caramel crumbles.



It was starting to get dark, so we planned to head to Fisherman’s Wharf area, the final stop of the night, to have a look around and grab something for dinner.



This was where my planning let me down – we arrived around 8.20pm to find it closed! It turns out that everything there shuts down around sunset. I took a few snaps and we then headed back to the b n b.



I wasn’t impressed to find that the window had been left open to our ground floor room all day by housekeeping.

The problem was, we had our heart set on something for dinner that was a bit more substantial than crisps in the room. Ollie did a quick google to find a dinner option. We didn’t fancy walking back into the centre of Victoria for a full sit down meal, and lots of other places had already closed – I suppose it was pushing 9pm on a Tuesday night in September, so we shouldn’t have been too surprised really.

He then found a fish and chips/Chinese takeaway combo not too far away, but it was closing soon. We powerwalked at an unbelievable speed to make it before closing and put in our order to takeaway.
Whilst waiting, we tried to pop to a liquor store a few doors up, but they were closing up. Everywhere closes at 9pm!

A random passer by said there was a liquor store round the corner, and said we should follow him. Probably not the best move here, but we did follow this guy who did lead us to a genuine liquor store. (For a brief moment I did wonder if this was how a mugging would start…)

We picked up a pack of Broken Ladder rosé cider for $13, and went back to pick up our Chinese.

After a walk back, the evening was spent eating Chinese in bed, drinking cider and watching Suits on the iPad. Classy people

Our dinner consisted of two large spring rolls, a portion of sweet and sour chicken balls and a beef chow mein ($31.45 including tax).







Day 13 - Travel to Telegraph Cove

Edited at 02:59 PM.
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Old 28 Apr 20, 09:34 PM  
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From the pancakes at breakfast until your Chinese food whilst drinking cider -sounds perfect except for the selfish bar steward standing up on the whale watching trip. Might have been tempted to give him a nudge

Once again , so many wonderful photos and memories too. Know what you mean about feeling deflated somewhat when a boat trip does offer many glimpses of the advertised attractions, but consider that better than trying to see them in captivity in a confined space.

I have loved the slices of Canadian history that you have encountered on this trip and the Totem poles today especially.

Thanks for posting a new day - has been a great read
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Old 29 Apr 20, 01:14 AM  
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Chocolate Favoris is definitely on my list now! Great day apart from the inconsiderate seat-hoggers and only one whale - but you saw one! 😁
Love the look of Victoria and can't wait to go in September - conditions permitting. 🤞🤞

Edited at 07:21 PM.
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Old 1 May 20, 09:49 AM  
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I may start researching Canada. I too would have been tempted to nudge the Germans
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Old 8 May 20, 02:48 PM  
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Scruffette
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Originally Posted by walt4it View Post
From the pancakes at breakfast until your Chinese food whilst drinking cider -sounds perfect except for the selfish bar steward standing up on the whale watching trip. Might have been tempted to give him a nudge

Once again , so many wonderful photos and memories too. Know what you mean about feeling deflated somewhat when a boat trip does offer many glimpses of the advertised attractions, but consider that better than trying to see them in captivity in a confined space.

I have loved the slices of Canadian history that you have encountered on this trip and the Totem poles today especially.

Thanks for posting a new day - has been a great read
I thought standing up at the front of a boat was risky anyway with a good chance of falling in (even with or without a nudge!)

It was still amazing to see our humpback on our tour - you're right that it's so much better to see them in their natural environment.

Thanks for reading

Originally Posted by anji View Post
Chocolate Favoris is definitely on my list now! Great day apart from the inconsiderate seat-hoggers and only one whale - but you saw one! 😁
Love the look of Victoria and can't wait to go in September - conditions permitting. 🤞🤞
We genuinely still talk about Chocolats Favouris on a weekly basis! We bought some of their fondue tins for people for Christmas presents, which went down really well.

Fingers crossed for you for September. We've got a trip booked to Toronto/Niagara Falls/Quebec in September, so keeping a close eye on Canadian travel restrictions.

Thanks for reading
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Old 8 May 20, 02:49 PM  
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Originally Posted by Nesbits View Post
I may start researching Canada. I too would have been tempted to nudge the Germans
A nudge for the Germans seems to be the general consensus here!

We loved this part of Canada - it really is beautiful.

Thanks for reading
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