After leaving Skagway, we spent the following entire day at sea. We woke up to the ship rocking back-and-forth quite a bit! It actually made me nauseous. I would frequently lose my balance in the hotel room or walking down the hallway, especially where there weren’t any windows. It felt like walking through a carnival fun house, for about 12 hours!
Video doesn’t do it justice, but if you watch the horizon where the pilot room is, you can see the up and down motion. Keep in mind the ship is almost 1000’ long and 125’ wide, so small swells can make each side go up and down a few feet when you’re on the 11th floor as we were! Side to side was worse, especially when combined with front to back bobbing. Closet doors and sliding doors swing open if you don’t latch them
We had breakfast on the 12th floor at the back of the ship, which was fun!
Even though we were at sea the whole day with not much to do, the kids really did great playing!
Whenever we got on or off the ship at different stops, the hotel director was always there to say hi. One day he told the kids to drop a note in his comment box if they wanted chocolate or ice cream. Umm, yeah they will!!!!!
Well…the director didn’t disappoint!! When we got back to our room later, we had quite a desert spread!
The director left us a voicemail saying they couldn’t bring them ice cream, since it might melt before we got back to our room, so he sent cookies instead!
We spent most of the day watching for whales.
We saw a beautiful rainbow:
That night, the captain said they had to evacuate someone to a nearby hospital (no idea why). It was neat to see two medivac boats be lowered down and head to shore. We had to wait for them to get back, which caused a small delay getting into Victoria the next day. It was worth it to see that, though!
The next day we woke up to more rocking back and forth on the waves. BUT, we saw tons of whales as we went alongside Vancouver Island! Several were jumping out of the water, making huge splashes in the distance.
But THIS one was the icing on the cake. It’s like it was waiting for us to come by so it could wave at us! So amazing!!!
We arrived in Victoria around 3pm and took a cab downtown near The Empress Hotel.
The last time we were here was in 2007 when Avin was a baby. Not much has changed, but I noticed the two really cool evergreen trees that leaned out toward you were no longer in front of the Empress. Not sure what happened to them.
Then we headed to Chinatown, about 10 blocks away. Someone on the street told us about the Fan Tan Alley that we should check out, so we did and it was awesome!
There’s a really need ice cream shop in the alley. The kids were glad about that!
The alley was used in the movie Bird on a Wire, where Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn rode a motorcycle through it.
We got to see Darth Vader playing the violin on the street. I guess that’s a good way to get attention! He stopped playing and just stared at me when he noticed I was recording him.
The guy on the bagpipes was pretty good though!
We then took an open-top bus tour around Victoria, which was really fun! The tour guide was really into architecture and drove us through neighborhoods that we could barely squeeze through. It was really neat to see the whole Victoria area this way.
Up on Beacon Hill, there are peacocks all over the place. This one decided to use the crosswalk to cross the road!
The tour bus went by mile zero, which is Canada’s farthest point west.
We then took a cab back to the ship and packed our bags to get ready to head back to our RV the next day. We hated that the trip was coming to an end.
What a trip! You really got to do a LOT in that week. Great pics as always. Keep ’em coming.