Day 3

We walked to Moca via Beacon Hill park and encountered two herons, one by the pond and one on top of a tree, and a young deer on our way. After our morning coffee we embarked on a walking tour. This route took us through a non-tourist part of town. First was the Victoria art gallery with interesting exhibitions of local artists. One of the most prominent and beloved is Emily Carr. We had never heard of her before, but she is very famous here so it was great to see several of her paintings in the gallery. She was also a writer, and she lived a couple of blocks from where we are staying so we passed by her childhood home yesterday. It was also nice to see paintings by our hostess, Pyx, at the gallery. Then we walked to Craigdarroch castle, which was built in 1890 for a coal baron Robert Dunsmir, a Scotsman, who unfortunately died before the castle was finished. The family only lived there for 18 years. It’s a huge structure (25,500 square feet) with 20+ bedrooms, etc so later it was used as a military hospital, and then a student dorm. It’s a tourist attraction that we could have done without. Then a very long walk to Abkhazi gardens via the Governor’s House and gardens, which was supposed to be a shortcut, but turned out to be anything but. We were foot sore so we went to the tea shop for lunch first. Good food but bad coffee, but we should have known better than to order coffee in a tea room. Abkhazi garden has a very romantic history connected to an English woman and a Georgian prince who were separated by war and reunited in 1946. They settled in Victoria and established this not very big, but lovely garden. After lunch and garden, another long walk back home…In the evening we walked to a local bistro for dinner then to the harbor for night time view.