After leaving The Butchart Gardens we went to downtown Victoria. I had heard from more than a handful of people that Vancouver and Victoria are the two most beautiful places on earth. Beautiful they are but they really don’t compare to much of Switzerland, especially Lucerne. Both Victoria and Vancouver are well-kept cities. Their streets are clean, as are their buildings, but neither their cleanliness nor landscapes compete with what Switzerland has to offer.

Victoria was named after Queen Victoria and has a strong British influence. The shopping district was smattered with Christmas shops. We bought a British footguard ornament for our tree.

Here’s a shot of Victoria’s legislative building.

The Fairmont Empress Hotel in downtown Victoria, like the legislative building, is situated in the business and recreation districts facing Inner Harbour. The Empress claims to serve more afternoon teas than most hotels in London. We didn’t have time to try afternoon tea, but if the tea wasn’t served on ice, then we didn’t have much use for it, anyway.

We encountered this mime as we walked the streets of Victoria. This talented street performer moved and sounded exactly like R2D2 from Star Wars when change was dropped into his tip jar. When still, he was perfectly still, which made me want to tell him a funny joke to see if I could get his face to move just one iota.

According to our tourguide, Victoria’s Chinatown is larger than San Francisco’s. After having been to San Francisco’s Chinatown, I can say one thing without reservation—Victoria’s Chinatown is much, much cleaner than Chinatown in San Francisco.

On our ferry ride back to Vancouver, we saw these dolphins and/or whales breaking the surface. The ferry ride from Vancouver to Victoria takes ninety minutes. We were aboard the largest ferry, The Spirit of British Columbia, a 19,000-ton vessel capable of carrying 470 cars and 2100 passengers. The ferry featured an extravagant cafeteria, a large snack bar that served ice cream, conference rooms, notebook computer workstations, a video arcade, a gift shop, and more.