In the strangeness that is part of us since we lived in Taiwan, the first place we headed upon arrival on Vancouver Island was the city of Victoria's Chinatown! It was quite disappointing. There was the obligatory gate:
And there remains just one street, one block long, which seems to be original to when the Chinese first settled in Victoria. It is called Fan Tan Alley. It was wonderful, but there was far too little of it.
Since Chinatown took such a small bit of time, we headed in search of gardens. The entire next day was set aside to visit Butchart Gardens, so on this day we went to a lovely public garden called Beacon Hill Park.
I believe the flowers are self-explanatory, but isn't this the coolest pine tree?
And this beautiful peacock was strolling the grounds.
All in all, Beacon Hill Park was possibly the most beautiful public space I've ever seen.
I've seen photos of Butchart gardens on various other blogs. It looks the most beautiful place.
ReplyDeletethat looked an interesting bit of Chinese culture, shame (as you say) there is so little of it. It looks to me to have the flavour and atmosphere of Hong Kong which I have loved visiting. The little animist temples and street food come to mind. The gardens look vast and well landscaped, I am guessing you don't have many pine trees in your part of the world? we are lucky to have several behind the house here.
ReplyDeleteI hope to see it this summer.
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