Victoria, Part Two

(Posted by Kyle)

The second day of our Victoria trip was rainy. We started with a really nice breakfast at the hotel's brewpub, then decided to do some shopping and take in a couple of the touristy attractions that our guide books suggested we avoid. They were both awesome.

First stop was the undersea aquarium.

It was kind of tiny and cramped, and the viewing windows needed cleaning, but it was full of pretty neat stuff. (Frommers took it to task for not representing the indigenous sealife.)

Steph is deciding whether or not to touch any of the stuff in the aquarium's petting zoo. (She finally did.)

There was a brief show during which a scuba diver swam around, picking up the sea creatures and holding them close to the windows. The crabs seemed like they wanted to be left alone, while there was a wolf eel that seemed to revel in the attention. It moved too fast for me to get a picture, but often swam in front of the diver when he was trying to show us something else.

The aquarium's resident octopus, which the diver left alone because they thought it was laying eggs that day.

Next up was Madame Toussad's Royal Wax Museum, dubbed cheesy and overpriced by the travel guide.

 

There was plenty of British royalty on display.

And the Hall of Creepy Ex-Presidents.

Here's the Madame herself, perfecting her wax technique on the guillotined heads of the French Revolution. I learned during our tour that she was volunteered to make death masks of all the severed heads.

At the basement level, you had to choose a path through the Chamber of Horrors or skip it. We chose the Chamber of Horrors, where a twitching severed head creeped Steph out so bad that she was jumping at real people by the end of the tour.

There were some pretty graphic displays. Mostly ways people have been tortured. This is the "Albanian Hook."

Joan of Arc or Princess Leia? You decide.

The rain let up a little by the afternoon, so we walked around a little before our ferry left.

The Parliament building is right across from the ferry dock.

We also walked over to the Thunderbird Garden, a park full of totem poles and a long house that sits next to The Royal BC Museum (which we need to go to next time).

There seems to be a strong street performer culture in Victoria. Even being off-season, we saw many of them out on the streets during our two days there. As we were heading for the ferry, we saw this guy:

A violinist in full Darth Vader gear, playing out in the rain.

The end.