Reason #1: Butchart Gardens
Reason # 2: Whale watching
Yes that's an Orca and yes (s)he is that close. The operator shut the engine down as soon as the whale breached and s(he) turned towards us as I snapped this shot. It was an unbelievable day. You can see how calm the water was and the tour we chose through East Wind was really well done. We had a "whale" of day - heh, heh!
Reason #3: The City
Arguably one of the prettiest cities in Canada. Lots of flower beds, parks with fountains and the harbour is very nicely cleaned up. One tour person referred to it as the city for newly weds, nearly deads and flower beds! How accurate that is I'm not sure but it is a very pretty spot. However here are a couple of the 499 pictures I took in 8 days.
The top one is the inner harbour. The BC Legislature is ahead in the distance, the Empress Hotel is on the left just out of view. The bottom picture is one of many lakes, in one of many parks. All of them seem to have fountains. It's amazing what you can do when you don't have 5 months of deep freeze to contend with!
I'll post some travel pictures one I get them straightened out.
