Tuesday, September 27. At sea. 57, mostly cloudy.
We enjoyed our impromptu “day at sea”, in port yesterday, by browsing the shops and trying a hand in the casino. In three roll at the penny slots, I made $0.70, so I immediately cashed out my winnings. (We ran into Nancy later, who cashed out her $2,400 winnings!). We had a pool menu lunch inside, as again the cold, fog and driving rain continued. We went to a “High Tier Loyal Guest” cocktail show, exclusively for gold, platinum and titanium level members. It was a special show by the production cast. Really our first time seeing then perform, and they were pretty good. The cute Irish dancer that we chatted with at the Block Party, was almost the star of the show, as he seems to specialize in lifts. We met L&O in the Mariner Lounge for a drink before dinner in Prime 7. The captain had announced that he expected very rough seas overnight, so we passed on the after dinner drink and instead grabbed Dramamine from Reception. Maybe it was rough, but we didn’t notice, as the Dramamine did it’s thing and George slept til 8 and I slept til 10! It really wasn’t rough seas during the day, but foggy.
We bounced from the Coffee Connection to La Veranda for lunch followed by some shopping and a nap. Hardy and Lissy invited us to cocktails in their cabin. They have an upscale cabin, maybe twice the size of ours, with a huge balcony on the fantail. Their butler served us drinks and provided canapés! After cocktail the 4 of us met Nancy, Wyndham, Sara and Keith at Compass Rose for dinner. We once again passed on the show (the not funny comedian).
Wednesday, September 28. At Sea am, with fog, Victoria BC. pm, 64, partly cloudy.
Note: I had the day right, but correcting the date. We again slept in, as no reason not to. After breakfast we spent most of the morning watching MSNBC with Ian approaching Florida. I did take a break and had a mid-morning massage. We arrived in Victoria at 1pm, an hour late due to “the challenging weather on the way”, which we assume was the heavy fog. By noon, the fog lifted and finally we could enjoy the view of Vancouver Island as we approached Victoria. Our tour wasn’t til 4:45pm, so after lunch, we enjoyed the rest of the afternoon basking on the pool deck, with a Margarita.
Strangely, we were about the only ones out there. I guess everyone else is on an earlier tour. Our tour was “Craft Brewery and Distillery Tasting”. We went on a 30 min. ride to the Twa Dogs venue. There were only 5 of us on the tour. Our guide led us through the brewery/distillery through 3 stations with beer samples and 2 more with whiskey samples. It was very clean and the tastings were great, but the tour had been sold as “the perfect food pairing for each tasting”, so leaving at 4:45, as we did, we were expecting to be having a tapa supper. But…no food to be found. Also we were supposed to remain at the distillery until 6:30, allowing us time to buy a drink of our preference and enjoy it in the beer garden. But…last call was at 6, and we didn’t get back to the bar from the tour til 6:02, so no last drink. Our bus driver did follow up with a pretty extensive panoramic tour of downtown. It was almost too extensive as we were the last ones on the ship for the 7:30 “all aboard” . We ditched our jackets in our room and went to CR for dinner. I guess they have all of the guests “tagged”, as we were seated at a table for 2 right next to our usual suspects. We ended the night with a nightcap in the Mariner Lounge with O&L.
2025-02-11