Exploring Victoria and Chinatown!

 

We set out exploring Victoria and Chinatown by Water Taxi  We caught the Water Taxi. at Fisherman’s Wharf near the Float Home Village.  Our taxi stopped for us to disembark at Chinatown.  Chinatown in Victoria is the oldest in Canada and the second oldest in North America after San Francisco.

Chinatown’s Fan Tan Alley

You cannot explore Chinatown without visiting Fan Tan Alley.  Fan Tan Alley holds the record for the narrowest street in Canada and is a central piece to Chinatown.  It is home to several small shops, including a very small record shop that our daughter has purchased records from.  She even  had conversations with the owner about classic rock during her visits.

Market Square Area

After leaving Fan Tan Alley, we wandered over to the next block over to the Market Square Area.  There are more shops, including a John Fluevog Shoes Store.  Did someone say shoes?  We had to stop and look.  I found out later from a friend we have a John Fluevog Store here in Denver.  It shows you how often I get to downtown Denver.

Lunch is Important

Lunch is a very important meal with all the walking around we did.  Did I mentioned this was my third trip to Victoria and we have been to the same pizza place each time. 🙂  With that being said we established it as our favorite pizza place in Victoria, it is Famoso Neapolitan Pizza.  It was Margarita Monday the day we were there.  There were specials on their Margarita Pizzas and Italian Margaritas, how could we resist?  Famoso Neapolitan’s thin crust pizza is so good and the service is friendly.  They even have Gelato, which sadly I am always to full for.

More Wandering

After lunch we wandered through some more shops, including our favorite Irish shop, Out of Ireland.  They had some good jig music playing, and after the margarita and being an irish step dance mom for 8 years I could not resist dancing a quick jig step.  Haha!  We continued to The Empress Hotel.  We walked around the beautiful landscaped grounds and walked through the hotel and made a washroom stop, and lo and behold there was a fireplace in there.  Fancy!  We walked over to the Harbor after leaving the Empress to check out the view and walked by Parliament.

 

The day ended with a walk back to our condo on one of the pedestrian walking trails along the waterfront.

We had a fun day exploring Chinatown and Victoria on a beautiful sunny day.  I hope you can take time to visit this beautiful city at some point in your travels.