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.
The City
of Victoria
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...
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