Day 4

In the morning we walked to Empress hotel hoping to get a last minute reservation for high tea, but there were no slots available. We then took a boat tour up to the Gorge point. The tours are in little 8-10 seat boats with the captain doing narration. In addition to the gorge tour, there is also a harbor tour, which is shorter and much more popular. The same kind of boats, but painted yellow, serve as water taxis. At first, we thought we’d be the only people on this tour, but at the last moment we were joined by a man with a young girl. The tour lasted about 75 minutes and the captain gave us a lot of interesting historical info about the city of Victoria, the buildings and communities along the way. The Victoria harbor is very busy - excursion boats, water taxis, ferries to Seattle, Vancouver, and points north, and sea planes with 130 landings a day. Then we walked to Chinatown, which is not big, but it’s the oldest Chinatown in North America. In the evening we walked to fisherman’s wharf for dinner. It’s a fun area with a bunch of fish shacks and a lot of outdoor seating. The we took one of the little harbor tour boats back to the harbor. Later in the evening our hosts drove us to a small coffee shop in West Victoria where their musician friends were playing. It was nice jazzy music. We stayed there until about 10 pm.