Day 8 - More Victoria & Butchart

Are we smart, or just lucky? Today exceeded even the weather forecast and was a spectacular, sunny, clear day!  Its amazing how much better everything looks inn the sunshine! Perfect for our visit to Burchart Gardens. (See the second post for today with photos from the gardens).

We spent the morning walking around downtown, a bit of Chinatown, the Hudson Bay Co. mall, coffee at a busy little hole in the wall, watching the float planes on their morning schedules. We got our tour bus to the Gardens about noon and returned by about 4:30.  Then we took a 45 minute harbor tour on one of those funny little water taxis. We saw two cruise ships docked, two areas of floating houses. Dinner at the Flying Otter next to the airport where we had our first experience with Poutine (french fries covered in beef gravy and melted cheese curds!)  A common Canadian "starter" - Quite tasty!

Back to the hotel in time to watch the Red Sox beat the Yankees to win the ALCS!  Tomorrow we take the ferry over to Port Angeles, back in the USA.

Victoria is a great city to visit! The Empress is a real extravagance but we loved it!

(P.S. Price of gas: my favorite arithmetic exercise while in Canada! - 1 Litre costs $1.399CAN. There are 3.785 litres per gallon. So, gas costs $5.295 CAN per gallon.The exchange rate today is about 1.30, so a gallon of gas costs US$4.07. )