Vancouver Island day 3
Today is food tour and downtown Victoria day
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| Victoria parliament building |
First thing first is to solve the transportation to Victoria downtown
Since it's not possible to find parking easily in a regular car, let alone a 22 ft campervan, we decide to find a 24 hours parking place in Sidney and took the bus down
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| Bus 70 from Sidney to Victoria |
We were able to get to downtown and walk around for about an hour before the food tour starts.
The first thing we noticed is sea planes are landing in the Harbor every 15 mins! It's slightly crazy to see how busy the harbor is, with ferries, cruise ships, water taxis and recreational boats. We also heard they will shutdown the marina if a whale comes into it. It is usually a migration whale as the local pods know not to come into the marina lol.
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| Sea plane landing and taking off in Victoria Harbor |
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| Piling of tourists into a whale watching boat! amazing that they fit! =) |
This area is Victoria Spanish step. Nice square with buskers singing and you can watch a sunset on the steps. So it's a popular spot. We saw some filming going on that day.
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| Spanish steps equivalent in Victoria for good sunset |
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| Market square that got popular as an open space during Covid |
At that point we met for the food tour. Andy is the operator and it's an interesting tour. I learned that Victoria does not snow and has temperate weather.
First step Philips brewing Company
The first tasting is a meat ball that you can procure as a lunch sandwich. It is beef and pork mix with a pesto to tone down the spicy tomato sauce. Very yummy
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| Meat ball tasting in Philips Brewery |
After that we walked around the china town and went into a few alleys like Fan Tan and Dragon alley. The generic red bricks used in a lot of Victoria building allows them to have a lot of filming as they can pass for new York etc. Fan Tan Alley is an example of Chinese settlements using alleys for gambling and getting the crime off the streets. They also have half number in address for the upstairs units as they become popular for business and art studios
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| Dragon Alley |
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| Fan Tan Alley |
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| China town gate with a time capsule at the side |
But with gentrification, truthfully all the local restaurants has been replaced as Victoria has become a cruise ship town to cater for thousands of tourists that land for 4 hours before leaving.
But a lot of buildings are getting restored in historical building as long as they keep the facade but upgrade the interior to be earthquake code ready.
Friends & Family Bakery
Next stop was a surprise. It's a filipino bakery that has very good ube bread.
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| Friends & Family Bakey with their ube bread |
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| Matcha lemonade |
Shanzees
It's surprising to get a Lousiana grits and biscuits place in Victoria. But they are award winning and we got a small tasting of the savoury and sweet biscuits. Shanzee is also one of the first shop house in Chinatown and there's a picture of them during the old times.
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| Shanzee's |
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| They also have great signs in the resturants |
Chimac is Korean fried chicken which is easily one of the better fried chicken I have tasted. Would go back in a heartbeat. We tasted the original and soy garlic and both are good!
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| Chimac korean fried chicken |
At that point we walked to a historical building Bard & Banker which is a nice pub. It is orignally a bank until 1988 and famous for live music.
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| Bard & Banker |
Rogers chocolate
We chanced into this chocolatier in Sidney but the main first shop is in Victoria. There's a broken glass at the window to remind them to listen to their customers as apparently it was broken by a customer rapping it with her cane. We got a Victorian creme but they are too sweet for my taste.
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| Victorian cream in Rogers |
We are also given Andy's card to go into the pub to grab a cider or beer as the 7th tasting. It's quite funny as Andy say this pub is a new pub meant to look old while they are modernizing Garrick's head pub which is an old pub they trying to make new =)
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| Pub next to Garrick's head Pub |
After the food tour, We took a water taxi to the floating home and walked back to Victoria. It's just such a cheeky and cute coloring that I had to do it 😂
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| Victoria water taxi |
We took the taxi to the floating homes and walked back from there
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| Floating homes |
At this point we are pretty tired and ready to go home. Dinner is a bit of a dilemma. The Victoria downtown is really been gentrified and it's tough to find a place that's not a tourist trap or a place with an ocean view as an excuse for charging exorbitant prices for mediocre food.
We end up going to red fish blue fish shack that turns out to have really fresh fish for fish and chips. Bill has his on a hot dog bun that's different too
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| Red fish , Blue fish which is really good |
We also had a good view of tourists kayakers that's entertaining. Tough to imagine what they are thinking wearing a long sleeve shirt and dress shoes and getting into a kayak =)
Fun fact: the empress was built on reclaimed land. And they put in wood foundation that was discovered to be sinking.that is all fixed five years ago. They also remove the ivy outside that was damaging the bricks. And discovered jewelry in the hedges stolen by raccoons who went into open guests windows
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| Cool statue in Victoria |
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