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tl;dr not really a ship but better than a fishing boat
Years later my GF and I took the Victoria Clipper from Seattle to Victoria, round trip, for a 3-day weekend.
The weird part was the facilities where we waited to board. Very ghetto, crowded, fluorescent-lit dirty old rooms from the 1970s, worse than a greyhound station but full of middle-aged middle-class people in their Brooks Brothers travelwear looking around distastefully and sipping their starbucks. In that setting we looked less like vacationers and more like a bunch of refugees or people waiting to be deported.
The ride up and back was nice, would've been nicer if the boat had bigger windows or a better place to stand outside. There was just a little space on the stern of the top deck where we hung out and enjoyed the view for a while. That was good, Puget sound is beautiful, waved to people on yachts who waved back for some reason. Coffee was lousy. Food was right up there with Amtrak.
Victoria was nice enough but there wasn't much to do besides gift shops and walking on the waterfront and Butchart Gardens and a few museums. It would be a good vacation for old people. We walked around at night but couldn't find any live music. Finally found the Bengal Bar at the Empress Hotel, which was excellent. Sneaked around exploring the hotel pretending we were guests. Went out to visit a friend at the university and saw lots of rabbits hanging around. We found out later that, years ago, they'd been set free from a testing lab by an animal rights group, and continued to survive and breed in the woods near the school.
Worth doing once, maybe twice if you have friends in Victoria or if you can find anything fun to do. Looks like I'll have to start a Victoria thread.