Tourism Victoria

Last weekend there was a special on a lot of the local tourist attractions. We checked out as much as we had time for, and here's a rundown:

♫ A Three-Hour Tour, A Three-Hour Tour ♫

Actually a twenty minute tour of the Inner Harbour. There isn't much to see in twenty minutes, and at any rate you can see everything from the shore. It was still nice to be out on the water for a little bit even if it was pretty chilly.

The real tour boat.

We saw a few seaplanes swoop in.

This boat is ridiculously large.

After our harbour tour we headed to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. In a lot of ways it was more of a museum than an art gallery, the largest exhibit was dedicated to Chinese archaeological artifacts. We saw hilariously small Chinese urinals which made some sense after we saw some thimble-sized goblets, another highlight was the funerary butt plug. Our thirst for Chinese history was definitely quenched.

On Sunday we toured the Pacific Undersea Gardens. I'd done some research on Tripadvisor prior and most of the reviews were pretty negative, but hey, how bad could a fish tank be? The answer is - awful. I would go so far as to say it was depressing. There was plenty of garbage and a poor scuba diver who showed us some (supposedly alive) local specimens. We didn't have to pay anything to get in and somehow we were still ripped off by the experience.

After that we wandered across the street to the Legislature. I work across the street and usually walk around the building every morning but we'd never been inside before.

Where they make the laws.

"Splendour without diminishment."

The "Leg" is a pretty impressive building and a popular photo on many local post cards. We'll have to get some more shots of the outside before we go. Inside is nice too, the gold you see in the picture above is really gold.

We finished our sight-seeing with some tasty burgers at Irish Times before heading home to catch a brutal thrashing of the Raptors by the lowly Bobcats.

Mmmmmmm . . . burgers.