Victoria Old Town and Butchart Gardens

Wednesday July 4th

Today we walked around the old historic part of Victoria. Mary and Alan were enjoying looking at the historic buildings but I was making new friends and since this is my blog here are  some of my new friends I met downtown.

Can you spot me in all these photos?

I even found a signpost pointing to Napier which is a sister city of Victoria.

This is the entrance to Chinatown, the second one established in the West when the Chinese labourers came to help build the railways and help establish the colony. The first one was in San Francisco.

The famous Fan Tan Alley, scene of many illegal gambling games in the early days and also used  in the Movie Bird on a Wire. 

This fella has been sitting here a long time!  His name is Michael Williams, a city benefactor,

 Saint Andrews Roman Catholic Cathedral
We stepped in here to take a look around  and it was  full of people sitting quietly in the pews.  We  thought they were taking respite from the busy city.  Suddenly the bells rang and in walked the priests to take the mid day service so we quietly left without taking any photos of the inside. It was built in the Gothic revival style. 

The trucks here are huge. this is parked in front of a 7 seater people carrier.  they are not small.  There are hundreds of trucks like this being used as everyday vehicles, all double cab. They are the family car in some cases.

In the afternoon we took a coach tour to the Butchart Gardens.  These were created out of an old limestone quarry. There was 16 feet of top soil trucked in the old quarry.  Words cannot describe this place and pictures do not do justice.

the rose garden featured roses from all over the world.  NZ was well represented with at least a dozen examples.

Can you spot me in this photo?  This is a really old timer used to sell popcorn in the gardens. 

 Butchart Cove where you can take boat trips.  They had all finished for the day by the time we got there.

At night the gardens were illuminated.  Unfortunately we had to leave at 10pm and it was not really fully dark, but it was still effective.  We did get to listen to an excellent concert from 8 - 9.15 on the concert lawn,  singer songwriter with piano and upright bass backing.

When we got back to Victoria the Legislative Buildings looked magnificent with the lights all turned on. 
What a busy day for a little kiwi. I think I will sleep tonight!