Vancouver, May 2025 – Part 1: Victoria B.C.
Fresh off the boat in Victoria B.C.; an excess of polite wondering; extreme salubriousness at The Empress Fairmont; tiptoeing through tulips, around flower baskets and past the homeless and abject; marijuana debate; dinner at Il Terrazzo
After five days at sea, Roy and I were ready to disembark from HAL Westerdam and face the immigration process in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. We’d been extensively coddled during our 28-day cruise from Sydney; now we were going to be looked after by my cousin, Bradley, and his wife Ingrid, South Africans who emigrated to Canada over 30 years ago.
(Click here for the first of my five posts on that Westerdam cruise… but please remember to come back.)
There’s nothing better than having family or friends living abroad, and it’s clear we’re going to have a fabulous time being shown their neck of the woods, as Brad put it.
Brad and Ingrid had to wait outside – in glorious sunshine, fortunately – while we gnashed our teeth in the long immigration queue. A single official was on duty. This is Canada, famous for niceness and courtesy, so there was a lot of polite wondering going on ahead of and behind us. After about half an hour of little movement, a second and more energetic young man clocked in, and things started to happen.
One night in Victoria B.C.
To my delight, my cousins had booked rooms for the night at the Fairmont Empress – their favourite – to give us a chance to see a bit of Victoria.
