THE WILHELM FAMILY: Victoria . Day 1

After our camping adventure we headed over to Victoria, BC by ferry from Port Angeles. The kids always enjoy riding the ferry and love to stand outside no matter how cold it may be. We left really early in the morning and so the ride over to Victoria was a little chilly. Mike took the boys out for a couple of minutes and then they would come back in to warm up. I was content to sit with the girls and stay warm. When we arrived in Victoria we were all a bit hungry and so we decided to park our cars and find a nice little deli for lunch. We parked in the Empress Hotel parking garage. I have to recommend doing this because it was relatively inexpensive and really convienient to everything downtown. We walked along and found a really good deli called Sam's Deli. The sandwiches were not cheap but they were really good.

After lunch we headed over to the beautiful Parliament Building. The kids enjoyed playing near the fountain last time we were there. This time we decided to go and see what the inside of the building looked like. Here are some pictures of the inside.

the assembly hall

the architecture

I really enjoyed seeing the beautiful archways and the stained glass windows. The kids were only interested for a short time so we decided to head across the street to the Royal British History Museum. We went and saw the Dinosaur IMAX and then took a look at the rest of the museum. We were just there a year ago and they had this cool Titanic Exhibit. This year they had something else that we weren't interested in seeing. However, the other permanent exhibits are so much fun and we could literally spend a couple of hours there. After we finished with the museum we headed over to our hotel which was only a couple of miles outside of the downtown area.

We stayed at a really quaint place called the English Inn and Resort. I felt like I was at a minature Butchart Gardens. The Inn was a little older with some modest updates. There were gardens and flowers everywhere. We stayed in the Royal Prince Albert's suite. It was on the top floor just up an old staircase off of the second floor. The kids just thought that was the coolest thing to be staying up there. It almost felt like we were on a hidden floor. For dinner that night we ate at the restaurant off of the main foyer. It was a fancy restaurant and not really a place to take kids...but we did anyway. It was interesting to try and get our already tired children to use their good manners. We were a little frustrated trying to entertain our children and thought we might go crazy until our food finally came. It was FABULOUS. Mike and I both ate duck with some sort of fancy cheese crepe things and carmelized onions in the shape of flowers. It really was out of this world. That pretty much made up for all the stress with the kids. We all slept well and woke up the next morning to a great continental breakfast and a walk around the gardens.