I don’t have any photos from the ferry ride over to Victoria from Seattle. This is partly because it started at 7 AM, a time of day when I’m not fully functional. Besides, you don’t see much of interest from a ferry, just a lot of water. On that ride you didn’t even see many islands. When we got to Victoria, we rented a car and drove to the bed and breakfast where we’d reserved a room, called Albion Manor. (The link goes to a photo gallery; excerpts below.) We enjoyed it very much. First, it’s a beautiful house with varied and interesting decorations and gardens; it turned out one of our hosts had been a set designer, and still likes to pick up beautiful and odd items at auctions. Second, our hosts and their staff ran the place very well and served us wonderful breakfasts. Our room was in the basement and was very comfortable. Here’s a picture of the house.
Albion Manor
Exploring the place, you find odd outside decorations, like the hands holding containers, sticking out from walls. The first one I noticed was on the front porch.
The hand on the porch
There were also hands on the rear fence (holding a glass mug with a silver top) and the side of the cottage (holding a silver teapot); I sure thought I remembered a 4th hand but if so I didn’t get a photo of it.
The gardens were very beautiful and soothing, with constant bird activity due to several large feeders. They had a lily pond:
Pond with fountain and lilies
Once I began exploring, I couldn’t miss the guardian of the separate cottage – it had its own gargoyle, on one corner of the roof, overlooking the driveway.
The gargoyle on the cottage
He was surprisingly hard to get in a good photo, I finally settled on the one above. Here’s a view from a little farther back:
The cottage gargoyle
If you decide to go through the whole photo album, be sure to look at the details; some of the outside decorations are, well, odd. Like this one:
Art work?
