"Brighton Next to the Himalayas" a Victoria Travel Page by MDH

Victoria is one of the true gems of the North American West Coast. Canada's last large Western city, Victoria exudes an "it all ends here" sense. A quiet, relatively confined city of 300,000 nestled on the southern end of Vancouver Island, Victoria continues to display a strong British atmosphere: Everything from numerous fish and chip shops, Anglofied pubs and buildings, high tea, and even British-like weather. Indeed, walking down some of the alleyways and one-way streets might make you think you were in Newcastle or Bolton instead of being a few miles from the Pacific Ocean!

This is precisely what draws hundreds of thousands of American, Japanese and European tourists each year during the summer months. Canadians come to enjoy Victoria's year-round mild climate (and this means mild in Canadian terms), one of the best in the country after Vancouver, as well as its laid-back, slow attitude. Vancouverites and Seattleans often use Victoria as a weekend getaway from the hustle and bustle of the city.

But this isn't to say that Victoria is completly slow. Victoria still is as cosmopolitan and diverse as Vancouver and Toronto, minus the high-rises and clausterphobia. It's sometimes as foreign as Montreal and Quebec are, only the foreigness isn't French. Finally the city is as friendly as St. John's, only it isn't as isolated.