Butchart Gardens (55 Acres in a Former Limestone Quarry), Orca Whale Watching, Royal BC Museum First Nations Art, Fan Tan Alley Chinatown & BC Parliament Buildings
📍 Victoria, Seychelles📅 3-day itinerary
The most British city in North America (the double-decker buses, the afternoon high tea at the 1908 Empress Hotel, the hanging flower baskets on every street lamp — 1,400 baskets, 250,000 flowers, changed twice a season) where the BC Parliament Buildings (1898, 3,300 electric lights outlining the facade every evening) face the Inner Harbour from which whale watching boats have a 37-50% per-trip probability of sighting wild orca, and where Jennie Butchart filled her husband's exhausted limestone quarry with soil by horse-drawn cart in 1904 to create what became the most visited garden in western Canada.
The Empress Hotel's Bengal Lounge Where the Colonial India Décor (Tiger Skin on the Wall, Rattan Furniture, Ceiling Fans) Has Been Unchanged Since 1908 — and Fan Tan Alley Where the 0.9-Metre-Wide Street Was the Gambling Den Centre of the Oldest Chinatown in Canada (Established 1858 During the Fraser River Gold Rush)
Butchart Gardens Where Jennie Butchart Filled a 50-Metre-Deep Exhausted Limestone Quarry (Her Husband's Cement Business Had Stripped All the Rock) with Horse-Carted Topsoil in 1904 and Planted the Sunken Garden That Now Has the Ross Fountain at Its Centre and 1 Million Annual Visitors
Craigdarroch Castle's 39-Room Romanesque Revival Interior Where 97% of the Original 1890 Fittings Are In Place (the Minton Tile Floor, the Painted Plaster Ceiling Medallions, the Italian Marble Fireplaces) — Robert Dunsmuir's Coal Fortune Built It and He Died in 1889 Before It Was Complete