Saturday 17th August 2013, day 38 - Victoria

Moose Tour part 1 - Vancouver Island

Day 4: Victoria to Vancouver

We didn't need to leave for the ferry until 3pm so after checking out at 11am we put our luggage in a safe room at the hostel then three of us made the ten-minute walk to the Royal BC Museum. Fantastic place! The best part was the Old Town – a bit like they have at Flambards in Cornwall, but better, or Herberton (Australia) but all indoors. On the same floor were reconstructions of a fish cannery, mine shaft and waterwheel, Captain Cook's HMS Discovery, and the First Nations Gallery, which had a lot of information as well as houses and totem poles.

That was just one floor! Thankfully we'd gone in there first, because we had to hurry through the second floor, which had the natural history section and also an exhibition on the Scott-Amundsen race to the South Pole. It's a shame we only had a few hours, I could spend all day in there. The ticket allows one to go in and out of the museum as much as they want all day until it closes at 10pm, so maybe I'll go back to Victoria on one of my days off while I'm Wwoofing, or before coming back to Vancouver, and spend as much time as I want looking at everything – hopefully that exhibition will still be there in a few weeks.

We left the museum at about 2pm and went down to the waterfront where there was a dragonboat festival going on: lots of teams of amateurs raced, several people paddling on each side of the boats. It's a fundraising event that is apparently held in lots of different places, a bit like Race for Life but paddling dragonboats instead of running. There were several food stalls so for lunch I got a Phillipino curry that tasted like a Thai massaman :) and we stayed for about forty-five minutes until it was time to get back to the hostel to go and catch the ferry.

Even though I only saw a small part of it, Victoria seems very nice. I'd heard that it was quite British, and I know what they meant by that now. I can't explain it, though. The ferry ride back to Vancouver went past lots of beautiful islands, and it was still sunny and warm so we sat out on the top deck – there was even a pod of orcas in front of the ferry at one point!

Cat, you'll be proud of me: I went out on Saturday night! Like properly out, into town, to a bar, at a ridiculous time. Shocking! After leaving the karaoke bar in Victoria at 2am, I said it was the latest I'd ever been out, and that I don't go out much anyway, and one of the girls, Nicky, was shocked and determined to make me come out the following night in Vancouver. She was planning a night out with a few of the friends she'd been staying with here, before going home. I was tired when I got back to the house and most of you know I've never been interested in going out on the town – but I did it. I was stood at a bus stop at a time I'd normally be in bed, planning on staying up for a few more hours. There were actually quite a few people around, and there's a popular 24-hour restaurant by the bus stop, so I didn't feel unsafe, and the bus was full of young people going Downtown too, it wasn't empty and creepy.

I didn't really like Downtown though, at least not on my own – it wasn't so daunting when we were in a group later. The streets were very busy and people had been out drinking for a couple of hours already. The place I was meeting Nicky and Suzi from the trip, and the others they were with, was full by the time I got there so I had to wait in the queue for about an hour before I got in and met them inside. It was a bar but had a dance floor and remixed music, so it wasn't a full-on club, but I didn't enjoy it – I definitely prefer sit-down pubs/bars like we'd been to in Tofino and Victoria, where I can listen to live bands, or at least decent music, and where there’s no obligation to dance. But I did it, it was an opportunity I took, however reluctantly. We left about 2:30am and the others bought poutine - the kebab of Vancouver, basically chips with cheese chunks and gravy – before we parted ways and I came back to the house. Now that was the latest I've ever been out.


So to finish up, I really liked Vancouver Island, and would definitely like to go back to the places I've been on this short trip, and see more of it. Off to the Rockies next!