Day 15 – Vancouver to Victoria

Today we lost our train legs after two days rocking side to side on the Rocky Mountaineer.

For the first half of the day we had a tour around Vancouver… which is a pretty nice place.  Stanley Park, which is just by the harbour and the Lions Gate bridge is a nice city garden – about 20 times better than the dodgy botanical gardens that Brisbane has to offer.  Stanley park also gave us great views back towards the Vancouver skyline.

Then we drove south towards the US border – but just before we got there we went towards the coast to the ferry terminal.  We caught the BC ferry across from Vancouver to Vancouver Island.  This was about a 90 minute crossing… very smooth and very picturesque as you weave through the San Jaun Islands.

Once at Vancouver Island the bus took us straight to the world famous Butchart Gardens.  Originally this was an old disused quarry but a woman transformed it into yet another amazing garden full of plants from around the world.  Butchart is another one of those places where words can’t really describe it, you just have to see it to believe it.

After the afternoon at Butchart we drove about 30 minutes down the road to the capital of British Columbia and the home of the 1994 Commonwealth Games – Victoria.

After checking into the Royal Scot Suites, where we were welcomed with and old guy playing a bagpipe… we took a night-time walk through the streets of Victoria.

In search of food we came across this great restaurant called The Old Spaghetti House – which was exactly what we were looking for – salad, pasta, garlic bread, dessert… all for $12 – great price and great tasting food.

On the way back from the restaurant to the hotel we walked behind the Houses of Parliament and ran across a family of Raccoons that were hanging around a tree.  They are a lot bigger than we thought – either that or we just came across some mutant ones.