Haunting Victoria

Hullo!! Can you guess where we are?? Well... it's not that hard given the title of this blog... we are in Victoria for a one-day turn around visit... We don't have a lot of time but... let's do some exploring!

We caught the tail end of the cherry blossom extravaganz

Leaves are already showing and... a lot of the petals are falling on the ground already. Cocoa Beanie likes the flowers cause they match his vest!

Given where we are in Victoria... a harbour front walk is not feasible but... we are going to a real, honest-to-goodness, live, castle!

Along the way we found some cat telephone poles... we had seen a bunch as we were driving into town but there are also a few along this stretch of road. 

Hmm... is there a deeper meaning to this... like the cats get peed on by all of the dogs that relieve themselves on telephone poles??

Or is this cat just thinking about... something deep and significant?

We also found a pac-man telephone pole!

With the little goblin/ghosts down there too!

And, no, this isn't what the blog title refers to...

Here we go... an entrance to the castle area...

Maybe this was the castle grounds back in the day... but now it just leads to a bunch of posh streets around the castle.

See... remnants of a castle wall maybe?

Or these might have always looked like this and were just ornamental to begin with!

I did a bit of sleuthing and... it's both... there used to be gates to the castle... see...

But the gates were removed or something, over time, and so they were rebuilt in recent times at the original location...

Anyhow... here we are... we are going to Craigdarrroch Castle... but first... there is a little woodland park behind the street sign.

There's an interpretive sign which shows a lot of the native plants...

It's a cute little area in this urban neighbourhood.

Huh... these are cute little flower cushions.

They have shamrock looking leaves with little pink flowers... we don't know this plant... but we looked it up and think it's an Oxalis - or wood sorrel...

The little woodland trail gives us a glimpse of the castle... and also spit us out into what looked like someone's driveway but... it was just the Franciscan complex...

They are great friends of nature and animals... well, St. Francis was... so we hope they are too. Maybe they even are friends to stuffies?

Finally... here we are!

This is Craigdarroch Castle! It is an example of a "bonanza castle", a massive house/mansion, built for the nouveau rich entrepreneurs of the industrial age. In this case, it was built for industrialist, Robert Dunsmuir, a Scottish immigrant who made his fortune from Vancouver Island coal.

We wonder if he was originally from the Craigdarroch area in Scotland! Anyhow... this castle was built in the from 1887 to 1890 and basically announced to the world that Dunsmuir was the richest and most important man in western Canada... hmph. Kind of a vanity building I guess.

Except... Dunsmuir died in 1889 before the castle was even finished! He left his entire estate to his wife Joan, who lived in the castle until her death in 1908.

After Joan died, a developer bought the place and then subdivided the land into residential lots. It passed through several other hands (some of which went bankrupt) before it ended up being used as a soldier's hospital from 1919-1921. Then it served as an early home for a college which later moved and became the University of Victoria, then a conservatory. It's now a National Historic Site and you can go inside on a tour! We didn't do that today though... not enough time... The inside is quite gorgeous apparently with lots of stained windows and wood...

And... here we go... the place is apparently haunted!

If you look at the windows closely, sometimes people see a woman, dressed in white, standing there...

People have also heard footsteps and... a piano playing by itself...

It looks pretty cool... we'll have to come back and do a tour after Covid...

Maybe there's even a dungeon here??

It's quite posh looking, isn't it... apparently quite Victorian in appearance... Do you see a woman in any of the windows? ... Me either...

The dogwood trees are blooming - they are so pretty!

We had a stroll around the neighbourhood and the rhododendrons are all in bloom...

We also came across this cool tree... which we think is a redwood...

It's got cool cones...

Which we don't see very often...

But behind the tree... at the end of the driveway... do you see it???

It's a topiary duck/goose with a little hat and maybe even a mask!! hahahahh!!!