Oh Canada!!! Saturday Nights in Victoria

The single best thing about our 7 day roundtrip cruise from Seattle was that every Saturday at 5pm we docked in the beautiful city of Victoria, Canada and had the night off, of course the downside was we only got into port at 5pm and sailed at midnight taking the short trip over the border into the States docking in the early hours in Seattle.

We were very lucky with the management on the Star (as I’d find on later contracts!) and as Victoria was the last day of the cruise that meant the photo/video gallery would be open till 11pm for the few PAX who remained onboard and didn’t enjoy the delights of downtown Victoria. This meant that at least 4 of the photo team had to remain onboard while the rest of the ship got to let their hair down and in theory one of the two of the video guys should have had to stay there as well. Fortunately we had a great manager and Cassie was happy for us both to knock off at 5pm as long as all the pre-order DVD’s had been delivered to the PAX cabins who had forgot to pick them up and they had enough extra stock of DVD’s for any last minute walk up orders. We’d take it in turns for who had to turn up for the first shift from 9-1 and then other would do 1-5 with both of us there for the last half an hour to make sure everything was set.

Our first time ashore most of the team went to the nearest steak house / pub we could find which was the Canadian chain The Keg, and wow what an experience - this was probably at that point the best steak I had devoured in my life and the service was excellent as well, we had such a good time we went back the very next week and was amazed at how the same waitress managed to remember almost all our names. Like any group of motley sailors the first pub we found after the steakhouse was an Irish pub, the Irish times and we may have run up a bar tab of over $2000 on one of the dancers birthdays once!

What made Victoria special was that we rarely had a night off in port let alone a Saturday night at the end of the cruise in the same port, this meant many times the drinking would start in the cabins around 5pm before we got off the ship, more drinks with a good non ship meal, then a pub - ideally with live music before a mad rush back to the ship for 11pm. Another week it was my first time going to proper sit down Thai restaurant called Siam Thai where I tried Sake for the first time and the food was amazing. We cut it close many times and we always wondered how serious the punishment would be if we missed the ship as you could simply get a ferry across to Seattle though without a passport that might be an issue, usually missing the ship is a straight sackable offence but we always wondered what would happen if we managed to illegally cross the border into the states and made it to the ship.

We also got scammed massively by the local girls who would flirt with us en-masse whenever we entered a pub and of course we would buy drinks only to have to return to the ship instead of going to all these awesome promised parties. The con was they knew that by flirting (because we are stupid men) they could get their drinks bought for the early part of the evening and then they could go on for the rest of their night while we had to hightail it back to the ship! We all lost count of how many times we got told our ‘accents were cute’

Perhaps the best Victoria night was this one

When we walked ashore as normal we saw a ska-punk gig flyer and we immediately jumped into a cab and went to the gig as we were chatting to the security guy before we went in it turned out he used to work security on cruise ships as well and he said if he saw us later he give us a shout when it was time for us to go. The first two bands were local Canadian bands but it didn’t matter that we hadn’t heard of them, to be at a gig with a plastic cup full of cider in your hand listening to a band that isn’t playing YMCA for the 50th time that week and being apart from the rest of the crew, it was truly an amazing night where we danced and skanked but also kept a close eye on getting back to the ship in time. Highlight of the gig had to be One Drop doing a ska punk cover of the theme song from Trey Parker’s Orgazmo ‘Now Your A Man’, the Voodoo Glowskulls were great but we sadly had to leave before The Bosstones came on.

There was one night and we had left it a little late and we couldn’t find any cabs on the street and we were in serious danger of being late back when we saw a limo parked near by. I forget who it was but we managed to convince the limo driver to take us back to the ship for around what a regular cab would have cost us anyway! Nothing like arriving in style back to the ship and the surprise from the guests and other crew at a mish-mash of photogs and cruise staff spilling out of a fancy limo.

Yet we blew off so much steam on the last night of the cruise that being forced back onboard after that brief taste of real life again made everyone go and party even more crazily once we were back onboard. As Sunday's in Seattle were largely a write off due to an early all aboard time for crew and nothing really being open until 11am, after a month of exploring Seattle most of us would rather go mental in Victoria on a Saturday night and sleep through till 2pm the next day giving us just enough time to sober up before drills.