Victoria
Saturday was the last full day of our cruise and was mostly considered a sea day. We were sailing until 8pm and would dock for just 4 short hours in Victoria, British Columbia. Basically, there is some law that says the ship has to stop at a foreign port so this was us fulfilling this.
We all met up in the observation lounge until around lunch time and then went our separate ways. I had lunch in the buffet and then went outside to the comfy chairs on deck 8 to sit in the sunshine. Jamie joined me there and we kept switching from sun to shade. The shade was a bit too cool and the sun was a bit too hot.
A little while after we got settled, someone pointed out whales a little ways away so we rushed to the railing and were able to see several whales blowing and even a tail coming out of the water a time or two. So that was fun.
I left Jamie sunning to go back to our room to take long nap. Then I sat in the sunshine for a while on our balcony. It really was a beautiful day.
We all met at The Manhattan Room for an early dinner. This is one of the free dining rooms that is supposed to be the more upscale. Gregg and I had eaten there before on this ship, but this time the atmosphere was loud and the service was slow. The person in charge apologized for the wait. It seems that everyone had in mind to have an early dinner, since we were docking at 8pm for our short stay in Victoria. But our meals were all good when they did arrive, so all was well.
Jamie and I had scheduled a ship’s excursion at 8:00. The excursion was a stop at Tim Horton’s (Jamie has a weird obsession with coffee) and then a bus tour of Victoria lit up at night for about an hour and a half. It’s here that things went off the rails.
At right before 8:00 pm, an announcement came over, saying that were were late and that we would not be docking until 8:15 PM and to DO NOT form lines to get off the ship. Rather, you should stay in the public areas or in your cabin until we were cleared to depart. Jamie and I were sitting in Starbucks beside the atrium and they never actually announced that it was OK to depart, but we saw the people who DID line up start moving so we joined the cattle. I guess we got off the ship around 8:20 or 8:25.
The buses for the ship’s tours were lined up outside of the terminal, but in walking up and down that area, we didn’t see ours. When we asked the NCL lady, she said the tour had already departed, but that she could put us on the 9:45pm tour. But since I hadn’t packed a thing and needed to have my luggage out in the hall by midnight since they were checking it straight through, that wasn’t possible. Jame COULD have gone, but there was absolutely nothing to do in the terminal or really even anywhere to sit for the time she would have had to wait.
When I said we would just get a refund, the NCL lady was kind of snotty, saying that we couldn’t get a refund because were were late. She said the tour left at 8:15. I told her there is no way in hell that tour left at 8:15 since they said the ship wasn’t going to DOCK until 8:15 and that we were not supposed to line up until they made an announcement. Which, by the way, the announcement never came.
There was a tour getting ready to leave that was a Craft Brewery tour and Jamie said we’d get on that, but it was full. So the lady went to ask her superiors and then came back and said we’d get our refund. Yes, we would. This all sounds so tame, but Jamie and I were both pissed. Not about missing the tour, but about the attitude of the employee, saying that is was our own fault for missing it because we were late.
After that, we joined the queue to take the shuttle bus downtown. Since we hadn’t planned on being downtown, we didn’t have a map and the Visitors center was closed (it was a few minutes after 9pm). So we wandered for a bit and Jamie asked a store keeper for the closest Tim Hortons. After wandering a bit out of the way, she found the Tim Horton’s (along with Lizzie) and was able to get her coffee fix.
Meanwhile, I was going in and out of the small stores at the square. And while waiting on a bench, I had a nice conversation with an older gentleman who was, as he described it, “messed up from smoking WAY too much pot.” I got a short lesson in the places to get pot and the differences in the quality. Never having smoked pot, it was quite the lesson. But he was interesting to talk to and we discussed life in Victoria, with him ending each sentence with, “Eh?” So a true Canadian.
After a bit, I decided to head back to the bus to go back to the ship. It was turning really cold and windy and I started to get a tickle in my throat. So I met up with Jamie and we took the shuttle back to the ship. As it turned out, the bus drivers of the shuttle were very informative and we kind of felt like we got most of what we would have on the other tour, plus were able to go into town. So that worked out.
Back at the ship, we both started the terrible task of packing. Since I was sending my luggage straight through to St. Louis, I wanted to squish everything I could into my suitcase, leaving my backpack light for the next day. I had only bought a couple of t-shirts for Gregg, a ball camp for myself and several magnets, I was able to fill it to the brim and get it out into the hallway by the midnight cutoff.
Other than a few hiccups along the way (the tour especially), it really had been a good trip and tomorrow would see us start the journey home. I took hardly any pictures today!
