Victoria, British Columbia

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We lost an hour by changing the clocks last night. On top of that I couldn't stop the tremor to fall asleep last night so it was a bad, short night for me. It was 7:15am and time to get up before I was ready. I spotted a lot of humpback whales as soon as I opened the curtains, so there was that. Yesterday, I forgot to say that my fever had broken so I must be on the mend. I am feeling a lot better.

We both agreed that we had not enjoyed the protracted breakfast we had in the GDR yesterday so today we went back up to Terrace buffet. Better. We spent an hour or more in Horizons waiting to get back in the cabin. We learned that we would be a half hour or so late arriving to Victorica. Our instructions from Shore Excursions Group said we should allow 20 minutes to walk to CVS Tours kiosk outside Customs and to arrive at least 10 minutes before our 1:30pm start time. So, we should still be fine. When we arrived we found that CVS Tours was not at the cruise pier and would NOT come. We were instructed to come to the kiosk outside the Empress Hotel downtown. This is not what we paid for. We missed the first complimentary shuttle bus and the 2nd one. We made the 3rd one that left at 1:20pm when no one from CVS had arrived. We got to the Empress Hotel and the CVS Tours kiosk by 1:30pm. There we learned that the Castle Tour & City Sightseeing we had booked departs from that spot daily at 10am and 2pm. They charge $40CAD pp. We paid Shore Excursions Group $59USD pp. Clearly we are not pleased. We have 2 other tours booked through Shore Excursions Group. They need to do a lot better job for us to be able to recommend them. We cannot recommend them in Victoria. We chose them based on our TA's recommendation, btw. The tour was fine in any event and after some confrontation and argument, it was agreed the bus driver would return us to the pier. As predicted it started raining as we docked and the sun came out at 5:45pm as we prepared to sail away at 6pm. Victoria is the capital of British Columbia. It was a pretty and historic city. We saw mile 0 of the Trans Canada Highway and have ideas for a future road trip.

We had dinner tonight at Polo and it was better than last time. This time we had a little whale watching since we were on the side and not over the ship's wake at the back.

Tomorrow is our return to the US and Astoria, OR. We've been warned in writing and verbally about re-entering the US tomorrow so we don't expect it to be a timely arrival. Also, Oceania has always sold this cruise as Astoria being a docked port, but the Port of Astoria has shown it as a tender port from the beginning, so we'll see how much time we wind up with there. Rain is predicted again. They need the rain out here so we don't feel too bad about it. Our ship's tour here was canceled. We had spent about 3 days and 1 night here previously so we don't have any plans other than wandering. If it is really raining, that may be abandoned too. We'll see. Last news is that the pilot for Astoria will be delivered by helicopter about 6:15am tomorrow in case the noise wakes us up. We've had that happen at one other port at least and it usually promises drama and a rough arrival. That's why they don't arrive by pilot boat!

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