Amateur Traveler Episode 945. Today, Amateur Traveler talks about kayaks and orcas and seaplanes,

farms, and flowers, and fantan as we go to Victoria, British Columbia. This is Chris Christensen from

Amateur Traveler. let's talk about Victoria.

This is another solo episode of Amateur Traveler, although I do have some other voices that will be included in here,

but I am just back from Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island.

I was there on a press trip.

I was there solo sponsored by Destination Greater Victoria. I had not been to Victoria for some time. So this was my third trip

that I've ever made to Victoria. Spent a week there. The first time I was there, just to put it in

perspective, was the day the men landed on the moon.

So in 1969, the second time I was there, I was there after the expo in Vancouver, British Columbia, which was in 1986.

And so it had been 39 years since I had been to Victoria.

But I found flying in that I still have a great fondness for the city

because that first trip that I went there in 1969 was the very first time I left the United States.

So the very first country I went to was Canada and the very first city I went to outside the U.S. was Victoria.

So I left at the chance to go there again. It is a very beautiful city for those of you who are

not familiar with it. Vancouver Island is a large island. It is 456 kilometers or 283 miles long,

so not quite three times the length of Long Island.

And Victoria is at its southernmost point and closest to the U.S.

In fact, if you go east from Victoria, you are in Washington State.

It's the one part of Canada in the west that sticks below the parallel where

the border was set. It is so close to the U.S., in fact, that as I was in the first hotel I was at,

which was the Delta Hotel's Victoria Ocean Point Resort, beautiful hotel, I'll talk about that

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