Day 8 - Castle & the Beach

Today, we were talking about the things left that we wanted to see and we decided that we had the Castle left and that was about it. So, we altered our travel plans and are going over to Seattle tomorrow, instead of staying on Victoria for 1 more day. We are very excited as Bri and I have never been to Seattle and so we are excited to see that and a new way home. We made it to Craigdarroch Castle, it was beautiful and very large. We learned that the man who own this castle, was the father of the man who owned the Hatley castle we saw earlier this week. Robert Dunsmire, was the man who own Craigdarroch Castle, James Dunsmire owned Hatley Park Castle. However, Robert died before he ever lived in his castle and his wife was estimated to be worth $20,000,000.00 in 1890, after his death. Can you even imagine how much money that would be today? Anyway, it was beautiful and we really enjoyed the tour, 87 stairs and all (even Lou climbed some of the steps).

After, we went to see a lighthouse, which was ok, but the time we spent on the beach with the kids, looking at crabs, sea creatures and shells was priceless. It was so fun to show them different things, things I have never seen and things that I could tell them about. Lou liked tasting the rocks when we weren't looking and Coly was quite happy to throw anything into the ocean. It was a great afternoon. As, we were leaving Bri spotted another sea otter. So, we went over to look and I noticed that there were 2 heads, but seemed to be moving in unison. It turns out there were 2 otters and they were mating. It was interesting to see them rolling over and acting so differently from the otters we have seen the past 2 days. We have really enjoyed Victoria, it has given Brian and I the bug to travel abroad even more then we have in the past.