Fabulous Victoria

So I finally got my act together and went through some of my photos of Victoria. No small feat I want to say, I have hundreds of photos just of Victoria.... I am not a great photographer by any means, but hopefully some of these photos will give you an idea of what I am talking about. And for our friends & family, yes this is me trying to entice you to come visit!

I will be posting photos of Greece, Italy, Holland and some of the other countries we have visited periodically. So keep checking.

 The Old Janion Building. Love this!!! I wanted to buy this building (when I win the lottery of course!) and make loft apartments (one of them for me & hubby) and shops below (one for me to sell my projects and paintings). Apparently somebody has already bought it and is doing just that. (Though I don't imagine they know about the apartment or shop for me...yet. Still waiting on that lottery win!)

 There is lots of great architecture here in Victoria.

 And ghosts too! The Maritime museum (above) is supposed to be very haunted. I still have to do that ghost tour of Victoria. Should be fun.

This is China town obviously. 

It is supposed to be the oldest China town in all of North America. 

Who knew? (might possibly be the smallest one too!) Still good though. 

Check out The Fan Tan Cafe and order the Won Ton Soup. It has everything but the kitchen sink in it. A meal for two!

As I was doing this, I again thought how much I love this place.

 We have everything here that one could want. Okay we don't have the heat of South America or the beautiful beaches of Greece but we do have some of the best weather in Canada, the Mountains, Ocean,

 lots of lakes and parks,

 I have to so another post just on Butcharts Gardens. That place is great.

 We do have lots of beaches,

 they are just not on the same scale as those in Greece.  

Where we live in Victoria is about 15 minutes to downtown in one direction,

Empress Hotel

 Five minutes to the beach/ lagoon in another.

The Lagoon looking towards Royal Roads. 

The castle is the one featured in the T.V. show "Arrow" and the movie "X-Men". 

Hard to see in this pic, maybe next time I will have a better one.

On the other side of the lagoon we have:

The Ocean on a moonlit night

  Five minutes to all of the big box stores and ten minutes in another direction and you are in the country.

 You can take a ferry to the nearby islands

 or to Vancouver or Seattle for a quick visit and maybe some shopping. We have a water plane for that or regular planes (though not as exciting) as well. And if you should want to leave Victoria (though why I can't imagine, unless it is to visit Italy or Greece or Holland, Mexico, Thailand.... Okay you may want to leave but you will definitely want to come back). We have a great international airport as well.

We have great restaurants (Pagliacci's, John's place and Jam to name a few), a big artistic community, great concerts, sporting and cultural events and friendly people. Wow! I sound like I should work for the Tourist Bureau. But it's true, most people that come here love it too. So you can see why it is so easy for me to get distracted.