We slept in on Tuesday and checked out of the hotel around 10. Thankfully they were able to hold our bags at the front desk until later in the day before our boat ride back. Victoria is the capitol city of British Columbia, so they have a Parliament building there. We took a self-guided tour of it and even sat in on a live session of the legislative assembly for a few minutes.

The next stop was my favorite part of the whole trip - Afternoon Tea at the Empress Hotel! We arrived a little early, so we took it easy and strolled around the hotel and some of the gift shops. The hotel was actually built between 1904 and 1908 by the Canadian Pacific Railway. Several British monarchs and other famous people have stayed at the hotel. We had reservations for noon and were seated a little early. We started out with a cup of strawberries with cream and then our tea came. We had a choice between several options that all sounded good. I ended up getting their Empress black tea blend, which was the best tea I've ever had.

Then we got a three-tiered food tray that started with some finger sandwiches, including a curry chicken sandwich, an egg salad croissant, some kind of cucumber sandwich, and a few others. The second tier was the best part - a currant scone with cream and strawberry jam to spread on it. It tasted so good! Finally we got to the dessert and all of us were starting to get pretty full. The dessert included cheesecake, chocolate & vanilla cake with marzipan (also known as Battenberg cake), a lemon meringue pie, a chocolate truffle, and a piece of shortbread. It was quite possibly the coolest eating experience I've ever had. It was pretty pricey, but definitely worth doing once in a lifetime.

Then we went exploring more of Government street and all the retail shops, including a specialty tea shop called Murchie's and an Irish themed store. After that we split up again and Troy and I walked around more of downtown and went by a cathedral we'd seen briefly on our city tour bus the previous day. We met up with his parents again and went to eat dinner at the Spaghetti Factory before grabbing our stored luggage and taking the Victoria Clipper back to Seattle. Fortunately there were plenty of taxis waiting for us, so we took one back to our apartment so we could pick up Troy's parents' luggage before dropping them off at their airport hotel.

Victoria is a nice small city to go to, with several great things to experience such as the Butchart Gardens and Afternoon Tea. We might go back some day, but probably not any time soon. We want to go back to Vancouver first. We had a nice trip and a nice visit with Troy's parents.