Yesterday was another day at sea. We went to a talk by the on-board naturalist, Jules Talarico (sailtranquility.com). We had been to see an earlier talk on glaciers which was great - he is an excellent speaker. The one was on whales and dolphins. In the evening we went to a show called British Invasion, by the Princess singers and dancers. It was much better than their previous shows and was very enjoyable. They are pretty cheesy and not really what I'd call professionals, especially compared with other cruises.
Today was our Canada day - in Victoria, BC. We made sure we got a Canadian flag pin. The ship docked at 7am and we were ashore by about 7.45am. We went for a walk to Beacon Hill park (via a Starbucks and wifi) with the aim of going to the 'Children's Farm' petting zoo. But it didn't open until 10am and it turned out I got all the critters I needed when we saw... SQUIRRELS! I was very excited and they came pretty close. We saw grey ones, dark brown ones and brown ones with ginger tails. In the same park we saw Canada geese, peacocks, a blue heron and some tiny birds that looked like hummingbirds or something. Oh, and 'normal' ducks too! The squirrels were pretty friendly so we got some neat photos.
Then we walked toward town and did some souvenir shopping (squirrels). At 11am we met Raewyn (my cousin) at the flagpole near the very pretty legislature building. We walked back to the car where Jeremy was. It was very nice to see then and we ended up going on a cute little boat ride around the harbour. We got off at Fishermans Wharf where they have neat floating houses (interestingly, one was named Kia ora moana; we really should have knocked on the door) and saw... An OTTER! (Northern River otter or Sea otter?) I was very excited again but this otter was a lot closer than the one we saw from the ship. We saw another blue heron closer too.
We had to be back on the ship by 1.30pm which was a bit dumb. It was an absolutely beautiful day in Victoria and, embarrassingly, I got a sunburnt neck.
On the ship we had a spa on deck 16 with an awesome view of the sea, other marine traffic and the skyline of Victoria.
PS. Tonight after our buffet dinner we saw the most amazing whale show yet. They were spouting and jumping and breaching for a good half hour at least.
Saturday, 8 June, 10.09pm
Today was our last day on the ship. It was relatively uneventful, though we saw some whale spouts and some adorable little jumping dolphins. We went to another talk by Jules, this one on Alaskan mammals. Tomorrow we disembark in Sam Francisco and pick up our rental car to head to Lodi. See you soon Jacinda and Matt!
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