By the time the Oosterdam docked in Victoria, we'd been on board for nearly 30 hours, and everyone was feeling a little squirrely. After fighting our way off the ship, Zeke and I told our five kids that we wanted to walk into town and find some fish 'n' chips for dinner. They all seemed to be down with that.
We stopped to take pictures of each other outside the Houses of Parliament...
...which is an impressive, imposing, eternal-looking structure that makes you think: Man, when these people lay down the law, it stays there.
I had to laugh at the "Main Entrance" sign, though: I guess Failed Entry Syndrome is not a strictly American phenomenon.
Not seeing a fish 'n' chips place in the immediate vicinity, we fueled the kids up with some juice smoothies at a stand outside the Wax Museum and kept walking... Past the Fairmont Empress Hotel... Past the unicycling fire-juggler entertaining a crowd of tourists on the waterfront, and the guy playing "Piano Man" on the guitar (is that even legal?), out to the end of the dock to check out some cool old sailing ships...
Past the beckoning pedicabs and the giant stuffed moose and Darth Vader playing the violin...
Past trendy bars and fudge shops and yarn stores, all the way to the edge of Chinatown... and somehow after several hours of wandering, the warm, clean, cheap fish 'n' chips place we had envisioned had yet to materialize. So we plopped our weary kids down in a B+ Mexican restaurant and ordered a mess of food and a couple of margaritas.
And then made our way back through the dark streets to the ship... Darth Vader had packed it in for the night, but the waterfront park in front of the Empress was still a bustling hubub. And with the Houses of Parliament all aglow, and our bellies all full of enchiladas, the Dark Side felt pretty far off indeed.
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