Victoria, the capital city of Vancouver Island, is a bustling city that revolves around a bright, sunny harbor filled with sailboats, small yachts, ferries and a floating underwater museum. The harbor is surrounded by some of the most characteristic buildings of Victoria: the imposing and regal Empress Hotel, and the massive Parliament building which lights up like a Christmas tree every night after sundown. The city is full of excellent restuarants and what seemed to be a lively nightlife scene with lots of bars and live music.
We spent a full day wandering around the city and checking out the sights. A highlight was a crafts fair on a sidestreet off the main avenue, which had hundreds of little stands selling handmade jewelry, picture frames, soaps, scented oils, painted silk scarves and other assorted trinkets and baubles. Around the harbor are also dozens of little stands selling jewelry and souvenirs, buskers doing magic and performance art, and those ubiquitous spray-painted lunarscapes you see in so many touristy areas, painted in minutes while the enthralled crowd (ok, including us!) looks on.
Victoria has a small but colorful Chinatown - about 2-3 blocks it seemed, full of Chinese vegetable stands and massage shops and a few dim sum parlors. The one at which we had lunch, Don Mee (538 Fisgard Street) was huge and seemed very popular with locals. The service was typical for a busy Saturday afternoon dim sum: rushed and not especially attentive, but the food was quite good. We arrived toward the end of the dim sum service so there wasn't much variety left, but overall it was a good meal.
Aside from the harbor, the most outstanding physical characteristic of Victoria is its architecture. Art deco facades painted bright reds, blues and yellows are at every turn, decorated with splashes of fresh flowers, giving the city streets a cheery feeling.