Anyone from Victoria or Vancouver BC?

Hello Adiscers from Canada!

I'm heading up to Vancouver then taking a ferry to Victoria for some backpacking in early August, but I've never even set foot in Canada. So, I was wondering if anyone is from the area, or has visited it recently, and could toss out some traveling tips and/or points of interest. I'm mainly focused on hitting the pacific rim national park reserve on Vancouver Island, but I have a few days to kill before my buddy arrives (he's meeting me later) and figured I'd take in as much as I could before I head home. Chances are I'll end up in Victoria for most of the stay since I would imagine Vancouver will be a bit more on the pricey side, but I'm totally open to ideas.

Anything helps, so feel free to reply to the thread or shoot me a PM and I'll check it out. Thanks everyone!

I'm a Seattle guy, so I'm only a tourist up there. I've spent more time in Vancouver than Victoria but both have their good bits. Grouse Mountain has a great viewpoint for the whole Vancouver area. There's a pricey skyride but I think you can just hike up instead if you're fit and so inclined. Other natural attractions are Stanley Park and their Asian paert of town.

Victoria has Buchart Gardens if you like more carefully cultivated nature (my mom dragged us), and the wax museum downtown is pretty cool despite the cheese factor. I hope you have a great trip!

I'm from BC and I go Victoria to visit my sister now and them, there are quite a few things you can do there. I like to scuba dive when I visit Victoria, but you can take a boat trues and see the killer whales witch and be fun are if you like to fish there are day charter can if the salmon are running their fun to cache.

the BC museum is in Victoria near the BC parliament building along with other interesting thing to visit there.
what I recommend is taking a walk on the sea wall just before dark. it a nice walk.

Trevor said:

I'm a Seattle guy, so I'm only a tourist up there. I've spent more time in Vancouver than Victoria but both have their good bits. Grouse Mountain has a great viewpoint for the whole Vancouver area. There's a pricey skyride but I think you can just hike up instead if you're fit and so inclined. Other natural attractions are Stanley Park and their Asian paert of town.

Victoria has Buchart Gardens if you like more carefully cultivated nature (my mom dragged us), and the wax museum downtown is pretty cool despite the cheese factor. I hope you have a great trip!

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Do you happen to know if there's a predominant cultural influence in the Asian part or is it just a mish-mash of Asian cultures? I always enjoy checking out chinatown and japantown in San Francisco. I would be interested in the Grouse Mountain as well, but I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to get a ride out there and my time constraints would be too tight for this particular trip. But if it's something that can be easily done as part of a day trip I would totally be down.

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DannyBBaby said:

I'm from BC and I go Victoria to visit my sister now and them, there are quite a few things you can do there. I like to scuba dive when I visit Victoria, but you can take a boat trues and see the killer whales witch and be fun are if you like to fish there are day charter can if the salmon are running their fun to cache.

the BC museum is in Victoria near the BC parliament building along with other interesting thing to visit there.
what I recommend is taking a walk on the sea wall just before dark. it a nice walk.

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A friend of mine was telling me about the whale watching out in BC, although she said that's about all she saw when she went. Scuba diving might be a bit out of my price range, though I would love to go someday. I can always hit the coast anywhere in the Pacific though, I don't necessarily need to go to Canada for that. I looked at the BC museum online as well and it looks pretty cool. I'm always interested in museums. And I can imagine that walk on the sea wall would be gorgeous at any time of day. Is there a view of the sun set over the horizon, or which way does the sea wall face?

BigKid25 said:

Do you happen to know if there's a predominant cultural influence in the Asian part or is it just a mish-mash of Asian cultures? I always enjoy checking out chinatown and japantown in San Francisco. I would be interested in the Grouse Mountain as well, but I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to get a ride out there and my time constraints would be too tight for this particular trip. But if it's something that can be easily done as part of a day trip I would totally be down. [snipped]

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I tend to think of it as a mishmash but it's apparently a little more involved than that: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown,_Vancouver. Grouse Mountain was an easy drive, discounting traffic. Typical driver mentality in my suggestions. However, there might be a fix for this as they apparently offer a free shuttle to the mountain: https://www.grousemountain.com/shuttle, so perhaps it can work after all.