Three days in Victoria: the mildest place in Canada, and the most English about it

Two nights on the southern tip of Vancouver Island: the legislature and the oldest Chinatown in the country on the first afternoon, the provincial museum and a boat out to the whales on the second day, and a quarry full of flowers on the way to the ferry.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Victoria (British Columbia)
Places
6 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Victoria sits at the bottom end of Vancouver Island, closer to Seattle than to most of its own province, and it has the mildest climate in Canada by a wide margin: roses in December, palms that survive, and a January that behaves like an English one. That fact shaped the town. Retired people came for the weather, the tourist board leaned into the Britishness, and the result is a small capital of tea rooms, double-decker buses and Edwardian stonework that is either delightful or laid on thick depending on your mood.

Underneath the pageant is a more interesting place. The oldest Chinatown in Canada is three blocks from the legislature. The Songhees and Esquimalt peoples have been on this harbour far longer than anybody else. The waters out front hold resident and transient orcas, humpbacks and a great many seals, and a boat gets you among them in an hour.

Two nights is enough for the town itself, and the third morning belongs to the gardens on the way north. If you can, come by ferry rather than by plane. The approach through the Gulf Islands is the best hour of the journey.

Highlights

  • A domed legislature from 1898 outlined at night in three thousand light bulbs
  • The narrowest street in Canada, a metre wide, running between two Chinatown blocks
  • Orcas and humpbacks in the strait, a short boat ride from the harbour steps
  • A limestone quarry turned into a sunken garden by the wife of the man who dug it out
  • A bookshop in an old bank hall with a coffered ceiling twenty feet above the shelves

Where to stay

Victoria, two nights

Everything is arranged around the Inner Harbour, a small basin with the legislature on the south side, the Empress hotel on the east, and the old town and Chinatown running north from it. The whole of it is about a kilometre across.

Stay downtown or on the harbour. The waterfront hotels are expensive and put you in the middle of everything; the streets around Fort and Yates a few blocks inland are cheaper and no further from anything in this trip.

Day by day

Day 1 in Victoria (British Columbia)

The legislature, the old town and Fan Tan Alley

Start across the water from your hotel. The British Columbia Parliament Buildings have faced the harbour since 1898, neo-Baroque under a copper dome, designed by a twenty-five year old English architect called Francis Rattenbury who won the competition and went on to build half of the waterfront, including the hotel opposite. He was later murdered in Bournemouth by his wife's chauffeur, which is not on the tour. Free guided tours run on the hour, and after dark the whole facade is picked out in thousands of light bulbs.

Walk north into the old town. Bastion Square is where the Hudson's Bay Company fort stood, and the blocks around it are the oldest commercial buildings in the city, now full of bookshops and coffee.

Keep going three blocks and you are in Chinatown, the oldest in Canada and the second oldest in North America, founded in the 1850s by miners coming up from California for the Fraser gold rush. Off Fisgard Street runs Fan Tan Alley, a metre wide at its narrowest, once the way into the gambling and opium houses and now the narrowest street in the country and full of small shops.

Eat in the neighbourhood. Victoria's restaurants punch well above a town of this size.

  1. 14:30

    British Columbia Parliament Buildings

    Architecture

    Free tours, roughly forty minutes, running most of the day when the House is not sitting. Come back after dark for the lights.

  2. 15:45

    Bastion Square

    Architecture

    The original fort site, now a square of Victorian brick with a market on summer weekends. Ten minutes on foot from the legislature.

  3. 16:30

    Chinatown

    Landmark

    Enter under the Gate of Harmonious Interest on Fisgard Street and find Fan Tan Alley on the south side. Small, and the whole point is how small.

  4. 18:30

    Brasserie l'École

    Eat

    A very good French bistro on Bastion Square with a short menu and no bookings for two. Get there when it opens or expect to wait at the bar.

With more time: Munro's Books is on Government Street between the harbour and Chinatown, occupies a 1909 bank hall with a ceiling worth looking up at, and is one of the handsomest bookshops in the country.

Day 2 in Victoria (British Columbia)

The provincial museum, then out to the whales

The Royal British Columbia Museum is next door to the legislature and holds the province's natural and human history, with the Northwest Coast collections at the centre of it and a full-size recreated frontier street indoors. Note that the third floor galleries closed in 2022 for a long rebuild and the museum has been reworking what it shows and how it says it ever since, so check what is open before you buy a ticket. The totem poles in Thunderbird Park outside are free and always there.

Lunch on the harbour, then take a boat out. The Strait of Juan de Fuca and Haro Strait are among the best whale waters in the world, with resident and transient orca, a humpback population that has grown enormously since the 1990s, minke, porpoise, sea lions and a great many bald eagles. Trips leave from the Inner Harbour steps and last three to four hours.

Come back cold and eat somewhere warm. The Italian place in the alley off Broad Street has been feeding the city since the 1970s and does not take bookings, which everybody grumbles about and nobody avoids.

  1. 10:00

    Royal British Columbia Museum

    Culture

    Opens at ten. Two hours is plenty given how much is currently closed, and the natural history floor is the strongest part of what remains.

  2. 12:30

    Ferris' Oyster Bar & Grill

    Eat

    Oysters and a good sandwich two minutes from the harbour, and quick enough to make an afternoon boat.

  3. 13:30

    Eagle Wing Tours Whale Watching

    Visit

    Three and a half hours out of the Inner Harbour, carbon neutral, and they will take you again free if the whales fail to appear. Book a day or two ahead in summer.

  4. 18:30

    Pagliacci's

    Eat

    Loud, cramped, no reservations, live jazz some nights, and the bread alone justifies the queue.

With more time: If the sea does not appeal, Craigdarroch Castle is fifteen minutes uphill: a coal baron's mansion from 1890 with four floors of stained glass and a tower, built by a man who died before it was finished.

Day 3 in Victoria (British Columbia)

The gardens on the way out

Butchart Gardens is twenty minutes north of town on the road to the ferry and the airport, which makes it the obvious last morning. It began in 1904 when Jennie Butchart decided to do something about the exhausted limestone quarry her husband's cement works had left behind, had topsoil carted in by horse, and turned the pit into a sunken garden. The family kept adding: a Japanese garden, an Italian one, a rose garden, and it now runs to over twenty hectares and takes about two hours to walk properly.

It is unashamedly a show garden and it is very busy, so go at nine when it opens. Summer evenings bring outdoor concerts and Saturday fireworks; December brings lights and an outdoor ice rink.

From the gardens it is fifteen minutes to Swartz Bay for the ferry back to the mainland, or twenty to the airport.

  1. 09:00

    Butchart Gardens

    Nature

    Open at nine, and the first hour is much the best. Start at the Sunken Garden, which is the quarry itself and the reason the place exists.

With more time: If you are staying downtown until the afternoon instead, Beacon Hill Park is ten minutes south of the harbour and runs to the sea cliffs, with peacocks wandering loose in it and the marker for the western end of the Trans-Canada Highway at the bottom.

Before you go

Getting in

The ferry from the mainland is the good way. BC Ferries runs from Tsawwassen south of Vancouver to Swartz Bay, an hour and a half through the Gulf Islands, and a bus meets the boat for the half hour into town. Foot passengers rarely need to book; cars in summer absolutely do.

Victoria International is twenty-seven kilometres north of downtown, near the ferry terminal, with flights from Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Seattle. There are also float planes that land in the Inner Harbour itself, thirty-five minutes from downtown Vancouver, which is expensive and completely worth doing once.

From Seattle and Port Angeles there are passenger ferries straight into the harbour.

Getting around

Downtown is small and flat and you will walk all of it. The legislature, the museum, Chinatown, the harbour and the bookshop are within ten minutes of each other.

BC Transit covers the rest, including Butchart Gardens and the airport, though the gardens are much easier with a car or on one of the shuttle buses that run in summer. The little harbour ferries that putter around the Inner Harbour are a bus fare and do a synchronised water ballet on summer Sunday mornings, which is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.

This is one of the best cycling cities in the country, helped by the mild winters and by two long rail trails running out of downtown.

Whale watching

Trips run from March to October and take three to four hours. You choose between an open inflatable, which is fast, cold and thrilling, and a covered boat with a heated cabin and a toilet, which is the sensible choice with children or in shoulder season.

Nobody guarantees whales, though most operators will give you another trip free if you see none. Humpbacks have returned to these waters in large numbers over the last decade and are now the likeliest sighting. Dress two layers warmer than the town suggests: the strait is much colder than the shore.

When to come

June to September is warm, dry and busy, and the hanging baskets on the lamp posts are at their most absurd. May and early October are quieter and still comfortable.

Winter is grey and wet rather than cold, and it very rarely snows. The city runs a flower count in February to annoy the rest of the country, which tells you everything about how it feels on the subject.

Victoria is a small town wearing a capital's clothes, and it works best if you let it be small: an hour in the bookshop, a walk round the harbour, a boat out and back.

The one thing not to skip is getting on the water. The strait is what this place is for, and the town looks entirely different from a mile offshore.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Can I do Victoria as a day trip from Vancouver?
People do, and it is a long day: three hours of travel each way and about five hours in town. You will see the harbour and nothing else. Two nights is the difference between visiting and seeing.
Do I need a car?
Not for the town. A car helps for Butchart Gardens and is essential if you are carrying on up the island to Tofino or the north.
Is the afternoon tea worth it?
It is a genuine local institution and it costs about as much as dinner. If the idea makes you smile, book it weeks ahead. If it makes you wince, skip it without regret.
When are the whales around?
Boats run from roughly March to October. Humpbacks are most reliable from June onwards, orca sightings peak in summer, and the shoulder months are cheaper and colder.
Is it really that mild?
Yes. Victoria averages about a week of snow a year and January days sit a few degrees above freezing. It is the wettest kind of mild, so bring a coat rather than a parka.