Day in Victoria, BC

Today, mom, sis, and I woke up really early to head over to Victoria for the day! We had booked a day tour with a local chinese travel agency and our bus left Richmond at 7.45am. It seems so wrong to wake up so early on a day off but I had taken the day off to spend it with my sis and mom. This is the first time I've ever been on a ferry and on the island so I was a bit excited altho a bit worried about being on the ferry. The ferry is huge and was not what I expected but I didn't realize we'd be on the ferry for an hour! It really wasn't too bad until the ferry started to make it's turns towards Vancouver Island and I could feel the water and the movement which started making me nauseous! I went out for some air and that helped a bit. I think HonHon would really enjoy being on the ferry and I would def go on again but next time, I'll take some gravol. HonHon is a bit upset that I had gone to Victoria without him but now I'm a bit familiar with downtown Victoria and we won't get too lost when we go together. Our first stop was downtown Victoria, the tour did not include admission to the Royal Wax Museum so we did not go to the museum instead we headed over to The Fairmount Empress as I wanted to pick up some tea from the hotel. I really wanted to have afternoon tea but we did not have enough time (only an hour in downtown) and would be heading over to Chinatown for lunch so it wouldn't be a good idea to be full for our free meal (included with the tour package). We took some photos around downtown, visited the Parliament buildings, and walked around the waterfront before meeting the group at the bus. After downtown, we headed over to Chinatown for lunch at one of the oldest restaurants in Chinatown, gosh lunch was not great (or edible IMO) and there was not enough food for everyone at our table cos it was set up for 8 people, the 3 of us made it for 9. We ended up being short on the chicken and soup! I ended up ordering a couple of dim sum plates (shrimp dumplings and spring rolls) and that wasn't very tasty either! Maybe we should have had afternoon tea and walked over to the restaurant! Oh well. After lunch, we had ten minutes to take photos in Chinatown which of course I did, took many shots of the gates in Chinatown but not enough time to explore the rest of Chinatown. I would have liked to visit Fan Tan Alley, the narrowest street in Canada. After Chinatown, we were off to Butchard Gardens for another couple of hours and it is a beautiful garden filled with so many beautiful flowers. My sister really enjoyed this part of the tour as she loves flowers and her fave flower was in full bloom covering most of the garden. Tulips, tulips and more tulips with so many colours and so many types, it was def a great treat! After the garden, it was time to head back to Vancouver. The ferry ride back seemed much longer and probably was since we were up so early and had a very long day. Once in Vancouver, we decided to head over to Mui Garden on Victoria Street for dinner cos we were much too tired to cook dinner. It was a really fun day and I am so glad to have spent it with my sister and mom! (More photos on my flickr account, I had so many photos to go thru, the ones posted are my fave ones! Enjoy!)