🇸🇨 Seychelles
Victoria
Victoria (population 92,000 city, 400,000 CRD metropolitan area; the capital of British Columbia and the seat of the BC Legislative Assembly, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island) is the most British city in North America: the double-decker buses (since 1903), the afternoon high tea at the Empress Hotel (the chateau-style railway hotel opened 1908 — the most famous hotel in BC), the Chesterfield sofas in the pub lounges, the hanging flower baskets (the 1,400 hanging flower baskets suspended from the light poles on the downtown streets — 250,000 flowers changed twice per season — the largest municipal hanging flower basket programme in the world), the cricket on the Beacon Hill Park pitch and the village-scale downtown streets that feel more like a prosperous English market town than a capital city. Victoria occupies a position of extraordinary natural beauty: the Strait of Juan de Fuca separates the city from the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State (USA) 24 km to the south; the Gulf Islands (the archipelago between Vancouver Island and the BC mainland) are visible from the Inner Harbour; the snow-capped Olympic Mountains define the southern horizon. The combination of natural access (the world's most reliable orca (killer whale) whale-watching from the Inner Harbour, May-October; 37% chance of sighting each trip), cultural richness (the Royal BC Museum — one of the finest regional museums in North America), horticultural perfection (the Butchart Gardens (the 55-acre floral display garden in a former limestone quarry, 1 million visitors/year, the most visited attraction in BC), history (Fan Tan Alley — the narrowest commercial street in Canada, the gambling den of Old Chinatown) and the infrastructure of a British colonial capital (the Legislative Assembly Buildings of 1898 — the largest government building in BC, with 33 km of hallways — make Victoria one of the most complete and satisfying cities in Canada for a 3-day visit.