Our Victoria trip review with photos and special note of thanks to folks in Victoria

[harryfat1]

Hello,

 

This is my part 3 in the photo series of our Celebrity Infinity Alaska cruise on 8/14 to 8/21. Part 1 was the Ketchikan walking tour, part 2 was Juneau city and Mendenhall Glacier and part 3 is Victoria. If you didn’t read part 1 or 2, here is the link:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1048718

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1050275

 

Similar to part 1 and 2, I will have narrative and link to my online photo album for future cruisers to get a preview of this excursion to see for themselves if it’s worthwhile. Actually I debated whether or not to even do a part 3 as there’s nothing special about this part, just us walking around town taking pictures. What’s the big deal about that? Any dummy can do that. The only reason I wrote this is to give kudos to the folks in Victoria that helped us out a lost and found (see below in purple). The photos and walking tour itself is marginal at best. I will start with the lost and found story as that had the biggest impact on our mood during the visit and then just add in the other info later in the review. If you are just interested in the port review, just skip the purple color section.

 

As before, here is the photo link on the “show” part of the show & tell review:

 

http://harryfat2009victoria.shutterfly.com/26?size=All&startIndex=0

 

Quick background: Second visit to Victoria. Previous visit was many years ago on a ferry ride form Vancouver, which included a visit to Butchard Garden as well as couple hours to walk around the Inner harbor area. So for this trip, we just did the roundtrip taxi ride to/from the pier.

 

OK, let’s get started.

 

 

With family of six, we have the option of taking the CVS shuttle at $6.50 Canadian pp round trip or take cab for $8.50 Canadian/per cab. I opted for taxi with the thinking it provided flexibility on return time versus a shuttle run. At the taxi line, we got on two taxis and were dropped off just outside the Parliament building area. Within two minutes after getting off, we realized we left my son’s backpack in the taxi that already drove away.

 

For anyone who has every lost anything, you can relate to the frustration of realizing something as gone, but can’t retrieve it. The backpack itself wasn’t that valuable, other than it was one of his favorite Mickey Mouse backpack and it had both kids’ jackets inside it. Both are brand new, one was bought just prior to the cruise and the other was a North face jacket given as a birthday gift from my brother in law to the younger one for his sixth birthday couple months ago knowing it’d be useful for the upcoming cruise. My son called it “the Alaska jacket”. And now everything is gone - inside a taxi – at a foreign port that we wile b leaving in matter of hours.

 

We knew it was a bluebird taxi company, but had no way to contact the taxi driver. So we walked to the tourism bureau to ask for help and the helper reluctantly called the cab company on our behalf, but acted like he had much better things to do than help us out. As we talked to the taxi cab company, they asked if we knew the name of the taxi driver or the number. Nope. Sorry. Typically, I don’t look at people’s names from the cab’s registration info and nope, sorry, I didn’t write down the cab number. So the person on the other end said if they hear of any lost and found, they will try to bring it back to the visitor center.

 

So then we walked out the visitor center, feeling frustrated and dejected, but tried to console ourselves that there’s no big monetary loss in losing the backpack. Everything can be replaced. Nevertheless, it put a big damper on the rest of the visit at the fine city of Victoria. As it was getting cooler by the end of the day, we had to look for 2 replacement jackets for the boys while at the shopping area. And during the whole day, every blue cab that drove by, we tried to look at the cab driver to see if that was our driver. Tough to have fun under these circumstances.

 

Toward the end of the day, we walked back to the visitor center to ask if any cab driver dropped off any backpack. Nope. Oh, well, time to go back to the ship. Flagged down a big van blue bird taxi van that could accommodate all 6 of us and on the way back, we told him our lost and found story and this taxi driver was extra nice in asking us to describe what the previous taxi driver looked like and he tried to call in the dispatch himself from his radio to see if anyone returned the backpack. But he had problems with his audio and couldn’t get through.

 

Once we got back to the pier, the taxi driver came out the car and talked to another blue bird driver sitting there at the dock waiting for new passengers and asked if he heard anything n the radio about a lost and found. Nothing. We appreciated this guy help and gave him an extra big tip for just trying to help us.

 

As we were walking into the security terminal, we talked to the security guy at the Victoria pier and told him our story and he said he would check at the office once he goes back in later. He asked for our name/cabin number and said he will call the bluebird company and see if anyone turned in anything, but he is not very optimistic as the ship is set to sail in less than 3 hours.

 

Feeling dejected, we went back to the cabin, rested and showered and went to eth late dinner. During dinner, we saw the ship sail away at the scheduled 10 PM timeframe and thought that we will never see the backpack again. After dinner, we went to the show and my wife and my younger son went to the purser’s office to see for one final time if there was any miracle of the bag showing up. She said she only spoke like 3 words “ Kids backpack…” and before she even finished her sentence, the worker held up the backpack with both hands to hand it to her. The bag had a special tag with our name and cabin number on it.

 

WOW!!! When we all heard the news in the cabin, the roaring could be heard couple decks above as we were so happy and relieved to have the backpack back after a long day. We never know what happened to the backpack after we left it in the cab – whether it was delivered back to the dock immediately when the cab driver went back the effort another run and the new passengers fund it on the ground or the backpack was found much later and brought back after the dock security guy called it in to the front office.

 

All we know was to get it to our hands, someone had to drop it off at the pier security, which then tagged it with our name and cabin number, handed it over to ship security that dropped it off at the front desk. Those are the minimum steps, maybe more hands were involved in getting the backpack back to us.

 

Whatever it is, just want to ex\press our overall gratitude for the people involved in getting this backpack back. Like I said before, the monetary value of this backpack and the content is minimal. Can be easily replaced for less than $80, but it’s the kids favorite backpack as well as birthday present that is harder to replace as they will always think, “it’s not the same”.

 

Final analysis is that I made the consistent error in this entire incident not writing down all the names of all the parties involved. If we had the names of the taxi driver, then it’d be retrieved easily. If I had the names of the second helpful taxi driver, I could have sent the company and letter thanking him for his help. If I had the name of the dock side security officer, I could have thank tried to write Ogden Point Pier to thank him personally. But I didn’t.

 

So at least I try to use this forum to thank all the parties involved and say from my contacts with the various parties in Victoria, the people there are genuinely one of the nicest folks we have met in our worldwide travels and kudos for those helping in the lost and found effort. Many thanks.

 

 

 

OK, after such long and drawn out story, it’s hard to follow with the regular cruise review. But we will try.

 

On a typical run, the Infinity was scheduled to arrive at Victoria from 2 to 10 PM on its day 7 Alaska cruise sailing. However, for our sailing, because the Sea Princess was also there in Victoria from 6 AM to 2 PM on her special 10 day run from SF, we had to wait for her to sail out of the harbor before we can go in at 3 PM, one hour later. And by time we cleared customs, it was post 3:30 before people were allowed to disembark.

 

Sailing into Victoria harbor, I saw a walkway extending out to the edge of the water (see photo #1050130) that would be interesting to visit, especially if you can time it with the arrival/departure of the various cruise ships. We never made it out there, but if you don’t plan to go into town, that’s be a good place to work around the dock area. Just be sure to walk a straight line as it’s a nasty fall down beneath if you veer off.

 

As one cans see from the pictures, the cost of cab ride is 8.75 Canadian Dollar. If you do the CVS transfer, it’s like $7/pp roundtrip. So if you have 3 or more people to your party, you are better off with the taxi.

 

Victoria is a beautiful city. We are from the San Francisco so area, so we are used to big cities, but after spending days on the ship and visiting the smaller towns of Ketchikan and Juneau, it took couple minutes to get re-oriented to the busy traffic area around Empress Hotel and the Inner Harbor. Not to mention the 77 degree bright blue sky day. Toto, I don’t think we are in Alaska anymore.

 

You can go online to request a walking map of Victoria ahead of time from the BC tourism bureau. Or you can just walk in and get one at the tourism bureau at the opposite end of the parliament building along the harbor front. I also have a copy scanned, so if anyone wants a copy now, go ahead and email me at Harryfat@Yahoo.com and I will forward the map to you.

 

We just walked up and down Government Street shopping and made a U-turn at the entrance of Chinatown (supposed to be the oldest Canadian Chinatown) and walked along the waterfront Inner harbor area to check out the street artists and crossed the street to the Parliament building. The original plan was to take the free tour given by the parliament workers on the architecture and art work within the beautiful parliament building, but due to the chaos involved in losing the backpack, that plan was scrubbed. Guess that will wait until next time. For those interested, the parliament tour is described online. It runs every 20 minutes during the summer:

 

http://www.victoriabc.ca/victoria/parliamentbuildings.htm

 

After the parliament, we walked across the street and took few more pictures of the Empress Hotel from the outside and decided to head back to the ship. In a more perfect world, if the ship had docked at 2 and if we hadn’t lost the backpack, then we would have accomplished more during this Victoria visit. But I am sure we will be back to Victoria somewhere down the road on our future Alaska cruises and we will forever remember the backpack saga.

 

At the end of the day, a vacation isn’t just about going to see this or that place on the check off list, but more about having fond memories and stories of one’s visit at the various places. In Victoria, we found ours.

[swe9742]

Thank you so much Harry. I enjoyed looking at your pictures of all 3 towns and reading your reviews. We leave on Sept 11th and will visit these 3 towns plus more.

 

Thanks again

[cruiseryyc]

Great story Harry and there is a way you could send "thank-you's" in a round-about way. Write a letter to the editor of the Victoria paper, it could get published and perhaps some of the folks who helped along the way would read it. Even if they didn't, at least the rest of Victoria would know that a visitor had a great experience. Here is the link to the Times-Colonist

 

http://www.timescolonist.com/

[harryfat1]

Great story Harry and there is a way you could send "thank-you's" in a round-about way. Write a letter to the editor of the Victoria paper, it could get published and perhaps some of the folks who helped along the way would read it. Even if they didn't, at least the rest of Victoria would know that a visitor had a great experience. Here is the link to the Times-Colonist

 

http://www.timescolonist.com/

 

Thanks for the great suggestion. I just emailed to the editor with our story and hopefully it will be published so the folks who helped in the process can read it.