We docked at 9am, the cruise terminal was close to the city.
Our excursion was a delightful two hours tour of area of Victoria in a horse drawn trolley.

The trolley was led by two draught horses, related to Clydesdales but not. The rider was a very well informed local who had the horses responding to word commands and sounds, (clop, clop,) resulted in horses increasing speed to clear intersections, then back to a slow walking pace.

The trolley had open sides and held twenty people, and there were two trolleys waiting dockside for us. So this was a very small privilege number and many passengers waited too long to try to book and missed out.

Phil and I chose and booked our excursions online months before sailing for this very reason.

We passed through residential neighbourhoods, beautiful homes of varying ages, some heritage listed and displaying a plague to show they were on the register.

Interesting facts and stories were told to us which made for a very pleasant short but relaxing tour.

Victoria had a ‘local eccentric artist’ of the late 19th-early 20th century, Emily Carr. She had owned two properties in town and both were still standing and were pointed out to us. ( Later, in town, close to the waterfront restaurant where we had lunch, there was a souvenir store/tour booking kiosk and I found a book on her life which I bought and read on board).

A fascinating woman, who never fitted in with society expectations of the time but she was determined to do ‘her thing’ regardless of the humiliation and criticism. She never married. She wasn’t a recognised artist until much later in her life, no surprise, however in town there now is a bronze monument erected of her and her beloved money!
Her whole life she wanted to own a baboon, she settled for a monkey!
She did make her mark. It was a great read.

Back at the dock shuttle buses were lined up to take passengers into the town-centre, they ran every fifteen minutes.

We went from horse-trolley to shuttle that dropped us in the town Centre and then walked around the seaside city. Harbour side was very much like our Sydney Darling Harbour, lots of expensive boats were moored close-by, cute little water taxis hovered around the harbour bobbing up/down as they crossed the waterway.
Sea planes took off and landed, ferries crossed taking passengers to various parts of the coastline.
We wondered who controlled all these moving vessels? It was a very busy place and we lunched at a restaurant on the waterfront.

Our delightful waitress was born/bred “Victorian”, attended university on the other side of Canada in Toronto, and was enjoying summer vacation, saving money and spending time with her family.

She was studying psychology and after graduation hoped to save enough to visit Australia. Her parents had spent time here and were so impressed, especially with the great coffee culture, that her Mum imports her coffee beans from Australia. There you go! She is right, the coffee at home is much better than in Canada or America.

After lunch we took a taxi to Christ Church Anglican Cathedral, situated on the top of a hill in the centre of town. A beautiful Cathedral, opened in 1928.
Phil spoke to the Benedictine monk on duty now living in Victoria. He had been a Military Chaplain in his early years. He told us they too were awaiting the appointment/announcement of a new Dean. Their Dean retired in October last year and a locum was in charge in the interim. We both hope St.Saviour’s doesn’t have to wait that long, almost a year!!

This is a beautiful Cathedral with two side chapels. We really enjoyed our short visit.
We had asked our taxi driver to please wait for us, he in fact, came in and quietly walked around the space, leaving when we did.

He drove us back to the ship via the large garden & open green spaces in the city’s centre.
This was a lovely 24° day, summer indeed, at last.