Coastal Cruise - Victoria

We didn’t dock in Victoria until almost 10 am, so I got up and went to abs class. It was fine, but quite short – only about 20 minutes. Then I had my usual breakfast in the Lido and watched us dock.

We had a whale watch tour scheduled and spent a lot of time vascillating about whether to go on it. I decided to go but bring my laptop in case it was just a lot of driving around looking for whales, because it had an indoors with tables and I figured I could work on the blog while we were looking for whales. Dave vacillated even more but eventually settled on coming with, which was nice. It took much longer than usual to clear customs, so we sat in the world theater for about half an hour. 

The whale watch boat was docked just around the corner from our boat, which was cool. We were the 3^rd and 4^th people on the boat so had our choice of seats. It was feeling pretty comfortable out and we were hopeful, so we chose seats outside upstairs. This was the wrong decision, because the trip ended up mostly being driving around looking for whales, and it was cold, and all the inside seats were taken by the time we realized we’d made a mistake. We did see a grey whale, and in fact cruised alongside it for quite some time. It was my first grey whale sighting and it’s not the whale’s fault that they are kind of boring.

We finally got back to the ship and we were quite like icicles. Also it was after 2:30, but the Lido serves their reduced menu until 4 (after which you have to starve until they reopen at 5), including chocolate croissant pudding (warm and yummy) for me and chocolate ice cream cone (cold, brr) for Dave. We came back to our room and cranked the heat up as high as it goes, and I put on my HAL bathrobe and got caught up on the blog while I warmed up again.

Eventually I was warm enough to head up to the gym, where the instructors were strongarming two nice ladies into purchasing their arch supports. They were using all the chairs and the mobile cart, but my instructor from the boot camp saw me looking and brought over a chair with my to use. I had a nice workout and it was especially nice when a guy who was stretching told me I have incredible energy.

I went down to the cabin and decided to start the packing process, since there’s not really room in the cabin for two people to pack at the same time. I was pretty much done by the time Dave got back, so he worked on his packing while I got showered and got ready for the evening. He finished packing just in time to come with me to trivia.

Jen was already sitting with our partners when we got there, and we all made a big deal of introducing ourselves since that was a bit of trivia we’d skipped. The trivia subject was movie music, and Jen and Scott were really amazing with Dave getting a few and consulting on others. Linda and I were mostly there to add wit and charm.  We ended up missing only one (Avatar, which I had even seen) but sadly one team got them all correct and received the coveted Holland America Tulips. I think they cheated. Dave enjoyed the trivia and it’s possible we might even do it again on our long cruise.

We had to run from trivia to our last dinner with Arta, and he started us off with a different kind of sambal and an extra shrimp appetizer. Because of Canadian liquor laws some of the bars weren’t open, which meant that the drinks in the dining room (and the two upstairs specialty restaurants) were extra slow. Dave and Jen took that into account and ordered their wines for their main dishes early, and they showed up exactly when their mains were served. It was a very nice dinner, not too long. Josh had spent what he called the perfect day, which meant watching a lot of golf and bringing sushi and hotdogs and a rusty nail cocktail up to his room to enjoy. Jen had gone to the Natural History Museum (not as good as San Diego) and Monkey C Interactive's ARTCADE which she thought was pretty terrific. It was the first day on the cruise that we’d gone our separate ways and it was fun to catch up at dinner. I will miss having dinner with them every night!

After dinner we were pretty much done for the evening. We went back to our room and finished the packing, then tagged our suitcases and put them outside. We told each other the story of Bubby’s friend Sylvia who forgot to leave out clothes for the next day, and checked our laid-out clothes frequently and obsessively. We put on our bathrobes and went outside to watch our final cast off around 9:30. It was odd to leave port that late, and it was also kind of magical as the ship left the dock and all the city sounds faded away and the only sound was the occasional wavelet shushing against the side of the ship.

We saw this adorable one -person tugboat