Victoria and then Back to Seattle
Posted on August 11, 2025 by Ching under Travel.
I know. I can’t believe I’m still posting about our Alaska cruise a month later. I promise this is the last installment. I just couldn’t fit everything into a single post and so here we are, five weeks later, still talking about our trip.
Victoria, British Columbia was our final port before returning to Seattle. It wasn’t really a sight-seeing port because we were only docked there for three hours, and we didn’t even get there until 8 PM. There were excursions offered to the Butchart Gardens but, after considering the time it takes to get there, you really would only have 15-20 minutes to explore the gardens before they closed for the day. We didn’t think it would be worth it so Brian and I just opted to do our own exploring. I saw on the map that Fishermans Wharf was only a 15-minute walk from the port so we did that instead.
We thought about not even getting off the ship, which is what my mom and dad did. They just stayed on a the ship and had a nice dinner. We wanted to get off the ship to get our passports stamped but they don’t even do that. I don’t think they even looked at our passport on our way back. At least we got a stamp from the Yukon Suspension Bridge when we were in Skagway. We were really hoping for some more passport stamps, though.
So we got off the ship and walked over to Fishermans Wharf. It’s not a bad walk but it got pretty chilly as the sun set. Neither of us were dressed for the cool weather because the forecast was 73 degrees, but that was the high. We were ding dongs in not taking into account we would be there in the evening and we failed to consider that the temperature would drop significantly once the sun was gone.
We got there just as shops were closing.
The house boats were really cool though.
The water taxis also looked cool. I wish we had ridden in it. I don’t even care where it went. It would have been fun just to ride.
We wanted to try this Mexican seafood place and this crab shack but both were closing up already. Plus, it was getting colder and colder. So, after poking around the wharf and snapping a few pics, we decided it was time to walk back.
It seemed kind of silly to only stop somewhere for three hours so Brian and I looked into this. Apparently, there is a US law called the Passenger Vessel Services Act (PVSA) that requires foreign-flagged ships traveling between US ports to make a stop in a foreign port. For cruises from Seattle, Victoria is a convenient pit stop to meet this requirement.
It’s super close to Seattle also. After leaving Victoria around midnight, we were back in Seattle by morning for debarkation. Debarkation was pretty smooth and we were off the ship in no time. I feel like waiting for the shuttle to our hotel took longer than actually getting off the ship.
Okay, so I lied. I probably will have one more post because I want to tell you about this really good restaurant close to our hotel that we ate dinner at the night before flying home. So come back for that post.
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