Hoidy-Toidy in Victoria

With Christmas just over and our African expedition on the horizon I'm going to be posting some of our favorite undocumented adventures of 2009 for the next little while (since we got into blogging late and unless you were there when we went its all new to you anyways).

Being the capital city of BC and a history several hundred years old, Victoria is home to several fancy and elaborate buildings, a few of which we were able to tour in our visit in May. The Empress Hotel was built in the early 1900s and has played host to all manner of royalty, celebrities and whatnot.
And how could you be fancy and semi-british-hoidy-toidy without having afternoon tea? Kathryn and I found the time to feel posh for a few hours while munching on scones and biscuits. Since the tea is bottomless and the tab is big we probably had about 7 pots and got some tea bags to take with us afterwards.
Designed by the same man as the Empress Hotel, the Victoria Parliament buildings are very nice but not radically different from the rest of the parliament buildings in Canada. One nice addition is the lights on the exterior which are turned on at night (as shown below). We took a tour of the interior and saw all manner of fancy carvings and stained glass, but if you've seen one legislative interior you have likely seen the same general things.