Feature Destinations
Victoria, British Columbia
British Columbia | Canada | North America
VICTORIA has a lot to live up to. Leading US travel magazine Condé Nast Traveler has voted it one of the world’s top-ten cities to visit, and world number one for ambience and environment. And it’s not named after a queen and an era for nothing.
Victoria has gone to town in serving up lashings of fake Victoriana and chintzy commercialism - tearooms, Union Jacks, bagpipers, pubs and ersatz echoes of empire confront you at every turn. Much of the waterfront area has an undeniably quaint and likeable English feel - “Brighton Pavilion with the Himalayas for a backdrop”, as Kipling remarked - and Victoria has more British-born residents than anywhere in Canada, but its tourist potential is exploited chiefly for American visitors who make the short sea journey from across the border. Despite the seasonal influx, and the sometimes atrociously tacky attractions designed to part tourists from their money, it’s a small, relaxed and pleasantly sophisticated place, worth lingering in if only for its inspirational museum. It’s also rather genteel in parts, something underlined by the number of gardens around the place and some nine hundred hanging baskets that adorn much of the downtown area during the summer. Though often damp, the weather here is extremely mild: Victoria’s meteorological station has the distinction of being the only one in Canada to record a winter in which the temperature never fell below freezing.
HE CITY
The Victoria that’s worth bothering with is very small: almost everything worth seeing, as well as the best shops and restaurants, is within walking distance in the Inner Harbour area and the Old Town district behind it. On summer evenings this area is alive with strollers and buskers, and a pleasure to wander as the sun drops over the water. Foremost amongst the daytime diversions are the Royal British Columbia Museum and the Empress Hotel . Most of the other trumpeted attractions are dreadful, and many charge entry fees out of all proportion to what’s on show. If you’re tempted by the Royal London Wax Museum, the Pacific Undersea Gardens, Miniature World, English Village, Anne Hathaway’s Thatched Cottage or any of Victoria’s other dubious commercial propositions, details are available from the infocentre. Otherwise you might drop by the modest Maritime Museum and think about a trip to the celebrated Butchart Gardens , some way out of town, but easily accessed by public transport or regular all-inclusive tours from the bus terminal. If you’re around for a couple of days you should also find time to walk around Beacon Hill Park , a few minutes’ walk from downtown to the south.
The best of the area’s beaches are well out of town on Hwy 14 and Hwy 1 , but for idling by the sea head down to the pebble shore along the southern edge of Beacon Hill Park. For some local swimming, the best option by far is Willows Beach on the Esplanade in Oak Bay, 2km east of Victoria; take bus #1 to Beach and Dalhousie Road. Other good stretches of sand can be found on Dallas Road and at Island View Beach.
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