Victoria is...
Photo by TenSagas.net ↑
Pretty. British. Quaint. A good place to retire. These are all the historical definitions of this weird little town. To bring its reputation into the present, Victoria is a loophole where you can get your big city pleasures - clubbing, shopping, organic food, yoga, cafes etc - all within a tiny downtown, which can be traversed on foot within 15 minutes (not counting bumping into friends), or by bike in 5. And the weather! Victoria is comfortable every month of the year. It gets cold (but not super-cold) and rainy in winter and bright and sunny (but not extremely hot) in summer.
Great photos of Victoria
Cheryl's Victoria photos at Flickr ↑
The Victoria BC Group photo pool at Flickr ↑
Victoria's Neighbourhoods
Downtown
The City of Victoria proper is full of cool little shops, public squares, awesome restaurants and cafes, a tiny and beautiful Chinatown on one end and the majestic Inner Harbour on the other. There's a bit of a bohemian scene among the young people, there's a bit of a nightlife going on, some art etc. This is the area that most of the info in this guide centers on.
Check out a great QuickTime VR Panorama of downtown Victoria ↑
Studentland - UVic, Camosun, University Heights, Gordon Head, Fernwood & Foul Bay
Probably 80% of Victoria's 20-somethings go to school, and most of them go to UVic, which is about a half-hour bus ride out of downtown, or Camosun, which is about halfway to UVic. UVic is cool because it offers a wide range of courses, a comfortable campus lifestyle, a good Student Union, and is quite affordable compared with other Canadian universities. And Camosun College is even cheaper.
James Bay, Fairfield, Cook St. Village and Oak Bay
James Bay sits between Victoria's majestic Inner Harbour, Beacon Hill Park, and the ocean. It's both classy and down-home, connected with the city, and also relaxed and out-of-the-way... it's very charming.
Fairfield and Oak Bay are more out-of-town. They're full of quiet, reserved neighbourhoods, home to families and retirees. Oak Bay is kind of richer, and Fairfield is more middle-class.
Cook St. Village is quite bohemian - it's full of interesting young people, going to school or working on art projects or just working, and chilling out and drinking coffee or going jogging or whatever they're into.
Esquimalt & Vic West
If you go across the Bay or Johnson St. bridges, you'll enter a land of quiet, interesting neighbourhoods, massive box stores, brand-new modern housing developments, ghettos surrounded by industrial ruins, etc. Lots of interesting and artistic people live here.
Hotel-land
All along the harbour, on the Esquimalt and James Bay waterfront, a metropolis of hotels accommodates the yearly invasion of American tourists, who arrive by the thousands on huge cruise ships, see the Gardens, the Whales, the Empress, the Harbour and the Museum, and then disappear back to wherever they came from.
Incredible wilderness just out of town
The other magical thing about Victoria is, as soon as you get out of town, you find all these amazing, world-famous, mind-blowing places to hike, bike, ski... I mean... whatever! And you can do it all any time of the year! This is where the Olympic teams come to practice when the rest of Canada is frozen over.
Our Nearby Nature page has tons of cool info about stuff to do out in nature
