Victoria

Our final port of call was Victoria, British Columbia. This photo overlooking the city has everyone in our group: Sally, Charlotte, Mark, Aaron, Ellen, Juniper, Janet, Rebecca, Hazel, and Luke.

Victoria was lovely, in the way that wealthy coastal cities often are. (And, no, there is nothing outside the frame of this photo to explain the piano. It's just a piano overlooking the ocean.)

Also tacky, in the way that tourist cities often are. No lack of maple in this Canadian city!

There is a pier where you can buy frozen chunks of raw fish and feed sea lions. The sea lions obviously know the routine and enthusiastically showed up to claim their fish.

It's fun to get close enough to a wild animal that you can notice normally unseen details, like a sea lion's nails.

Or the backside of a peacock.

We spent about 10 minutes watching this very angry peacock try to intimidate some crows away from a pile of birdseed. His tail was on full display the entire time. We also learned that in addition to displaying their impressive tail feathers, peacocks also rattle their feathers to make a clattering sound.



It sure seemed like the peacock was rattling his feathers to intimidate the crows, but science suggests the rattling may have been more about impressing the nearby pea hens. The crows never did leave the seeds, but this is one fine looking peacock, so maybe he had some luck with the ladies.

We wound up getting hot dogs from a shop on the busiest corner of the main tourist street because it was quick, convenient, and kid friendly. To our somewhat pleasant surprise, they were also delicious.

My mom took the kids back to the boat, and Aaron and I wound up with some time to wander by ourselves. We saw charming residential neighborhoods and stunning ocean views, and somewhat inexplicably, these steps into the ocean. No beach, no docks, just the barnacles and other sea life claiming the bottom few steps. Presumably there was some reason for these steps when they were built in the mid-twentieth century (our guess based on style and appearance), but these days there is no apparent reason for them. Just the pleasure of sitting, watching the ocean, and feeling like you've discovered a tiny private mystery.

Back on the boat, Hazel and Luke show off their matching Victoria T-shirts.

And attack Sally with icy hands. (They were also using ice water as hair styling product.) We had previously declared that Hazel and Luke couldn't sit next to each other at dinner because they would be so focused on playing that they wouldn't eat. We lifted the ban for our last dinner on the boat, and the kids were happy to get up to their silly shenanigans.