Victoria

Victoria, the capital of British Columbia on Vancouver Island, is Canada's most British city — a city of afternoon tea, double-decker buses, hanging flower baskets, English pubs and meticulously maintained Victorian architecture that has made it a popular retirement destination and, increasingly, a tourist draw in its own right rather than a mere add-on to Vancouver. The Parliament Buildings, illuminated at night, and the Fairmont Empress Hotel (since 1908, the venue for the famous afternoon tea ritual) frame the Inner Harbour in a picture-postcard Victorian composition. The Royal BC Museum is one of the finest natural history and cultural history museums in Canada, with exceptional First Nations collections. Beacon Hill Park, with its free-roaming peacocks and ocean views, is excellent. Butchart Gardens (22km north, on a former limestone quarry in Brentwood Bay) is one of the world's most spectacular formal gardens, especially dazzling when illuminated at night. The whale watching tours from Victoria (June–October) encounter orca pods, humpbacks and minke whales in Haro Strait with extraordinary regularity — some of the most reliable whale watching in North America. The Gulf Islands (Salt Spring, Gulf and Galiano Islands) are accessible by ferry for peaceful island exploration. Victoria is connected to Vancouver by BC Ferries (2 hours) and to Port Angeles, Washington by passenger ferry. The city's restaurant scene has developed well — West Coast seafood is excellent.