Victoria, British Columbia

15th & 16th Nov (Sat/Sun): Trip to Victoria, BC

Trip to Victoria was planned quite last minute.. :p like we decided to go only on 11th Nov and booked everything only on 13th Nov.. phew.. If I did not visit Victoria during this weekend, then I would not have to chance to visit it ever because the rest of my weekends are full already~

At first I thought I would have to travel there alone because Noon and Cynthea only want to go there during Spring but in the end Rita was my travel companion! :D happy :D

We booked the package offered by Victoria Clipper (same one as my San Juan Island trip), which includes the round trip ferry and hotel. The rest is free and easy so the 2 days before was mad rush to find maps and attractions to visit and how to get to places.

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Victoria is part of Canada and is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. It is the capital city of British Columbia.

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Early morning start as had to reach Pier 69 by 7a.m to check-in. The boat leaves at 8a.m and the total traveling time is about 2 and a half hour.

As Victoria is part of Canada, so we had to go through customs but the process was very fast and no checks were done.
Upon stepping out of immigration and walking a short while, the view of the habour, Parliament Building and the famous Fairmont Empress Hotel came into sight.. Beautiful!

-Victoria's wax museum-





-Fairmont Empress Hotel-

-The Harbour-

-Britsh Columbia Legislative Buildings-

-Royal British Columbia Museum / IMAX National Geographic Theatre-

-Visitor's Centre-

-Miniture World located with Fairmont Express Hotel-

Our first stop at Victoria was the Butchart Gardens. It is located 20mins away from Downtown Victoria but accessible by public transport. Before reaching the Garden, I knew that there would not be any flowers around because it is Winter season.. but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed when everywhere I go it is all green.. esp at the Rose Garden.. (reason why Noon and Cynthea would only be going there in Spring.. because at that time, all the flowers would be blooming) I felt the nicest part of the Garden was the Japanese Garden, followed by the Sunken Garden.

Sunken Garden:

Seed and Fireworks Field:

Rose Garden:

-Imagine this place filled with roses.. imagine...-

-Where's my flowers?-

But the place was still beautiful in its own sense..

Japanese Garden:

These were the only flowers we saw:

So if i were to go in the Spring or Summer, the garden would be like this:

After the Garden, we headed back to our hotel in Downtown to put down our bags.

-Downtown-

With Macdonalds that have candeliers and 7-11!

-Our hotel (Best Western Carlton)-

We then walk around our hotel and Chinatown which was nearby. The Chinatown at Victoria is the oldest Chinatown in Canada.. and also the smallest..

Walking around Downtown:

-Market Square-

-Chinatown-

By then the sky was already quite dark even though it was only 4 plus and as we did not have our lunch (only snacks) we decided to look around for dinner too at Chinatown. In the end, we decided not to eat any Chinese food (quite sick of American Chinese food liao) but.. we bought char siew!!! Haha saw it hanging in the shop and both of us immediate crave to eat it! Hee.. but that wld not be our dinner.. that is our snack when we study later at night! :)

Not being able to find any food, we just randomly walk towards the main square of downtown, randomly going into shops to look see look see..

in the end we ended up eating American food at the food court in the shopping center!

After we eat finish, it was 6pm.. (but feels like 10pm though) and the shopping center was gg to close liao (so early) but we didn’t return to the hotel! Time to go check out the highlight of the day! Pretty rite!

-the sky looks so stormy.. like in those superhero movies.. is batman appearing? :p-

Found this outside the IMAX theatre.. find me!!

After that, we walked all the way back to our hotel.. where we snacked on Char Siew and studied for a while :)

Next morning, after having breakfast which consists of some cold fries and a few pieces of Char Siew, we check-out of our hotel and headed to University of Victoria!

-On the double decker bus-

-View from the bus-

Why are we heading there when the university looks like an industrial park and the whole place is so quiet?

The answer is because of all these cute fellows! Rabbits on campus!! How cool is that! So much better then having squirrels..

-All the color spots are rabbits!-

-Rabbits sleeping-

-See how close we could get to the rabbits-

But.. I think some are so immune to people and might even be fed by people that they are no longer scared of us.. a couple of rabbits would come really close to us and one even chased me and Rita when we got to close to take photo or try to walk pass it.. Some more black in color.. Scary! They are no longer that cute after that.. lol..

The rabbit that chased us..

After that we paid a visit to the famous Craigdarroch Castle.. Built by a very wealty man whose fortune was $20 million back in 1880s… WOW! In total the house has 87 stairs over 4 storeys.. but it was not as bad as expected cause half of it was going down..The house is like split into the front and back part where the latter is mostly for servants. Overall some of the rooms were quite pretty and it was interesting to know the history of the Craigdarroch family and the building.

The view from the top of the Castle was amazing too..
can see the Olympic Mountains!

By the time we walked finish the Castle, it was about 1pm and we haven’t had lunch. But we came out we this crazy idea.. hee.. I’ve been wanting to eat KFC since I reached US.. (cause my dad always say that KFC in USA is different.. and so kind of use to always eating at least once when in US) but it is super hard to find one in Seattle! :( but I manage to find one in Victoria! On the way to University of Victoria, while on the bus, we saw this KFC outlet and we decided that if we have time we would try to come back and find it. So with a rough idea of the location of the KFC and a bus guide, we manage to make our way from the Castle to KFC!! Woohoo!

-View of the Olympic Mountains while finding our way to KFC-

Initially we were thinking of maybe bringing our KFC to Beacon Hill (another attraction) to eat.. but considering that it might be very rush and I still got some souvenirs to buy, we gave Beacon Hill a miss and bought our KFC to the food court to eat. The check-in time for our boat was 4pm and lucky we did not go to Beacon Hill because we just managed to get everything done in time! :)

Last few shots of Victoria famous buildings.. (can never get enough) beautiful sky!

Back in Seattle:

Overall the trip was great! We managed to go to all the attractions we wanted to visit, traveling from one location to another was a bliss due to the little homework that we had done within the 2 days, the weather was great! Sunny blue sky (even though the weather forecast stated rainy) and lastly there was the surprised KFC meal! Most importantly, glad I had such a great traveling companion!

and i luv my new camera! *muacks*