Sharp's Travels

We were up at 5am this morning to get ready to head over to Wal-Mart to pick up our charter bus into Vancouver and over to Vancouver Island. We arrived there early and it was cool standing outside so we stepped into the entry way of Wal-Mart. As the employees came in to work I would say “Welcome to Wal-Mart”. They would smile and say thank you. I told Gay “My God I’m working; I’m a Wal-Mart greeter!”

The bus took us around to a number of hotels in Vancouver to pick up others that we on our tour. We arrived at the ferry around 9:30am. We were booked for the 10am ferry. They loaded us on and we went up to the lounge to relax for the 1 1/2hr trip.

When we reached the island our first stop was Butchart Gardens. The grounds and flowers were beautiful. You think you’ve seen the most beautiful flowers and you turn the corner and you mouth drops open with the site of something even more beautiful. We had 1 ½ hours to spend there and we could of used more. It was breath taking.

Miles, our driver then took us down into Victoria. We were right along the Harbor. There they had a bunch of sidewalk artist selling their items and yes I did buy something. It was stained glass with real flowers inside. It has beveled glass around the edges. I can hang it in my window at the 5th wheel.

On down the line there were a couple of people, one spray coated in bronze and one called the plaster man. They would stand as statues and unless they blinked you wouldn’t see that they were real people. They had their pots out asking for money.

We ventured over to where the sea planes were and watched as a few of them taxied up the bay to take off.

We took pictures of British Columbia’s Parliament buildings. The big stone buildings were real impressive. We also got pictures of the Empress Hotel. Wow what a massive building.

We chose the Spaghetti Factory to eat at and that was a mistake. We didn’t have a good meal. We even paid extra for their clam chowder and that was a disappointment.

We were lucky enough to see a couple of big schooners come into port. If you look close at the pictures you can see the people standing way up high on the riggings. They rode all the way into the harbor like that. They got a big hand from everyone for that when they docked.

Our last stop was the Royal London Wax Museum. We saw Queen Elizabeth, Princess Diana and the rest of the royal family, past and present. They had a number of the presidents, Elvis, the Bonanza crew, Marilyn Monroe. Walt Disney and the list goes on. There was also a house of horrors in the basement.

Miles was waiting for us when we were all done and took us back to the bus and we headed back to the ferry. This ferry was bigger then our morning ferry. It had six decks. We went to the top and found a seat by the window for our 1 1/2 hr trip back to Vancouver.

By the time we delivered all the other people back to their hotels and were brought back to Surrey it was 11pm. It was a good day but a long day. 16 hours from start to finish.

Gay has uploaded the pictures See the Victoria album.