Downtown Victoria

We woke up and enjoyed the free breakfast at our motel. Then we'd made arrangements to meet Rob on his coffee break downtown. He took us to a jazz cafe across the road (which was great) then advised us to check out the Victoria Public Market. It's in the bottom of the old Hudson's Bay building and is super rad.

So many interesting food places. They were just opening and we were still stuffed from breakfast so all we did was take pictures. 

 I love the vibe down here. Would be super rad for makers to display their wares too.

 This is where the beer festival is happening later in April.

Here's a picture of the Darth Vader building which doesn't look so darth vadery with the settings I used.

 Interesting architecture. There are some rules about heritage buildings and development so there are some really interesting work arounds and ways they've done things here. Like these two buildings which are joined now, don't have similar bone structure at all, but they've tied them in with the colour and trim details.

There's so much brick in Victoria. I love it!

 Our next stop was Capitol Iron.

It's a Victoria mainstay which we discovered in Sidney when visiting my dad. The downtown location is HUGE and even cooler than it's smaller Sidney sibling. We spent a long time looking at everything then started walking towards China town.

You can tell we're getting closer.

So China town has been shrinking. There are fewer and fewer Chinese stores/restaurants and housing going up so the face of this part of town is changing a lot.

My brother told me to make sure we checked out Dragon Alley. I've only ever heard of Fan Tan alley, so we ventured that way.

 Dragon Alley is really cute. So many little nooks and crannies that are awesome.

 Like this space.

 Some are shops/businesses.

 And some seemed like living spaces.

 And then some parts just seemed like they were from a completely different place.

 They finally dragged me out of the alley and back to the main road.

 Love wandering through this grocery store. I loved the smell. Andrew said it was fishy smelling.

 We wandered up to the gates and then back down the other side.

Fan Tan alley has changed a lot in the 18 months since I've been there. 

 Then we walked down to Murchies for lunch and down to the waterfront.

 David got his lunch here:

 And then we just wandered around the stores and looked at all the neat stuff. Like totem poles.

 And blossoms.

 I might be a bit obsessed.

Then we heard from Rob; his family was going to meet us for dinner. So we killed some time here. I swear I was here in the 80s with my family.

 And then made our way back towards Rob's work.

 The walk past city hall was gorgeous.

 We had dinner with Rob's family and I didn't take a single picture. Then they went home to put the kids to bed and we went to the house boats at Fisherman's Wharf.

 It was gorgeous, but absolutely freezing. That was a theme for this weekend if you haven't noticed!

 And then it was time to go home to bed so that we could hang out with the Lins all day Sunday!