Next stop was Victoria. There was a bus/ferry that ran from the Canada Place cruise dock to downtown Victoria using the BCFerries. In a narrow passage the Swartz Bay (Victoria) bound Spirit of Vancouver Island passed the returning Spirit of British Columbia.

The weather on the ferry trip was beautiful. This sailboat caught my eye.

The Inner Harbor of Victoria had flowers everywhere. Each street light had two hanging flower baskets.

This is a random flowerbed on the grounds of the Empress Hotel

Whereas most harbor cities I have visited have Duck Tours with surplus army amphibious vehicles, Victoria has "Hippo" tours using custom modified school buses. Here is "Henrietta Hippo" in the Inner Harbor.

This is one of several decorated fiberglass orcas that we saw throughout the city. I assume it was an art project similar to either the pandas or party animals in DC.

Victoria was holding an International Busker's Festival This is a collage of pictures of events at the festival and freelancers around the festival.. Two interesting images in the collage are 1) a picture of another decorated orca in the upper center; and 2) the left center image of trumpet player below an orca topiary.

The Buchart Gardens were originally a limestone quarry used to produce portland cement. The owners, Robert and Jennie Buchart, built their home near the quarry, After the limestone deposits were exhausted, Jennie, brought in topsoil and converted the quarry into a sunken garden. This is an picture of that original sunken garden.

At the far end of the sunken garden is the Ross Fountain. It is magnificent ever changing fountain. It did not repeat over the 15 minutes I watched it.

Throughout the shady areas in the gardens were these little topiary creatures.

In addition to the flowers and shrubs, trees were also gardened. This is a variety of birch tree.

This boy fishing by a waterfall was one of several flora / sculpture / structure tableaux found in the gardens.

Within the extensive rose garden this individual blossom was opening.

.This is a collage of individual blossoms I took in the gardens.

This collage shows views of the individual garden architecture

The Victoria Butterfly Gardens are located on the road to/from Buchard Gardens. This is a collage of various butterflies. The gardens' most spectacular butterfly was the Blue Morpho. They have a metallic-blue on the top of their wings but the underside has a much duller pattern of black and yellow ringed eyespots. They were most difficult to photograph because alighted they would bring their wings together above their backs showing only the duller side. Fortunately persistence paid off and I did get several pictures. In the collage you can see them and the center right side image shows one alighted with its wings together. The greenish yellow butterfly in the upper right is another spectacular species: the Tailed Jay, aka the Green Spotted Triangle.

This is the view from a rest stop on the Trans-Canada Highway One on Vancouver Island north of Victoria. The Olympic Mountains are in the distance.

This is a view of Mount Baker taken from the ferry back to Vancouver from Victoria.

This is a picture of the Suspension bridge over the Capilano River. The original bridge was built in 1889 to provide access to the rain forested land on the western side of the canyon. Rebuilt using wire cable in 1904. It has been modernized and completely rebuilt since then. The bridge stretches 450 feet across and 230 feet above the River.

This is a view of the bridge from an end showing how far it descends before starting back up.

Within the park is an attraction called "Treetops Adventure". Advertised as offering "a squirrel’s eye view of a thriving coastal forest", It consists of a series of suspension bridges, some reaching as high as 100 feet above the forest floor, between massive Douglas Firs.

This little waterfall in the river below the bridge gave me a chance to practice some of the pointers I received on the photographers' tour back in Haines.

One of the ancillary attractions in the park is "Raptors Ridge Birds of Prey" an area where handlers bring captive birds. This is a female kestrel. I was attracted to it because in the late 60s my brother Peter caught and trained one back in high school at Randolph AFB in San Antonio Texas. We had it for about a year before he released it, and for the rest of the time we were stationed there it would occasionally come by looking for a handout. It provided the model for my first (and only) attempt at developing my own black and white pictures. This is the closest I have been to a kestrel since then.

This collage is made from the pictures I took in the Stanley Park Aquarium in Vancouver. The feature exhibit was " Jelly Invasion" on jelly fish (see the second image from the left on the top and lower left image) Outside they had beluga whales, African penguins and a tropical rain forest. Having photographed white ibises at Pinckney Island National Wildlife Refuge, discovering the scarlet ibis here was a pleasant surprise.

In the Tropical Rainforest Exhibit this Hyacinth Macaw seemed to be particularly interested in posing for pictures

This dolphin swam up below me as if to say "take my picture".

Here the dolphin was practicing swimming backwards on its tail.

Back to its trainer for a treat

Horse-Drawn Carriages are "the" way to see the Stanley Park Attractions

This is one of eight totem poles located on Brocton Point. Two others are in the background.

This is a view from the land of the Brockton Point Lighthouse which I photographed previously from the Zaandam.

"Girl in a Wetsuit" was created and placed after an attempt to get permission to copy Copenhagen's "Little Mermaid" failed. Instead a modern diver statue reminiscent of the Little Mermaid was created.