Sunny Day in Victoria

Thursday, May 14, 2009--Victoria, BC

The sun was out all day, so we were on the go exploring the city. We walked a total of 32,345 steps!

We started the day at the British Columbia Museum which the guidebook highly recommended. There was a special exhibit of items loaned from the British Museum that traced the history of mankind throughout the ages. All the items on display were excellent representations of the arts and crafts of the various peoples. We spent two hours seeing that. Because our ticket was good for the whole day, we came and went taking a lunch break to explore part of town and to eat in a Chinatown restaurant. Among the other exhibits at the museum that were especially nice were the ones about the native peoples, the ones showing the development of the various areas of commerce after the arrival of westerners, the natural history exhibits of animals (including a wooly mammouth), etc. We also saw a film at the Imax theater about a man from Morocco who left on a pilgrimage to Mecca and ended up traveling all over the world before returning home 30 years later. His name was Ibn Battuta.

We took a tour of the provincial capitol after leaving the museum, a very nice building that has been restored within recent years so that it looks new. Then we walked across the street to tour the Empress Hotel which was designed by the same architect.

Many of our steps were put on by two outings from the downtown area. One was northward to an area with the governor's home, an art gallery, and a home that is like a castle. The other was to the Fishermen's Wharf area with small stands selling seafood and piers lined with very nice houseboats.