Victoria BC- not worth it - at all.

Took the family and some visitors from home to Victoria a week or 2 ago for a day trip. What a waste of a day and of money. I'm sorry but what a completely boring destination, there was absolutely nothing to do except walk along the front of the government building, along the pier, look at the hotel where the queen stays, have some food and go home.

Vancouver Island, for those of you who dont know is a huge island off the coast of BC, that is more than 400 km from north to south. There is a large population of people living there scattered across many towns/cities. Some of these places have even more crime than Vancouver believe it or not, nonetheless, at the bottom, closest to Vancouver is Victoria, which is unbelieably actually the capital of BC. Its positioned as a great tourist destination in itself.

The cost to get to this sh*thole at the end of Vancouver Island? This is the fun bit... one way its $37.75 per vehicle, and then a further $10.25 for each passenger!!! It cost us $78.00 plus taxes EACH WAY, thats $160 to visit Victoria on a day trip. Lets just imagine what else you could do with $160...

Needless to say we wont be back again, but it wasn;t like we weren't looking for other stuff to do. First of all we wanted to see the Titantic exhibition at the local museum, the signs were up, come on it we said. So we paid our money and went in. "Wheres the Titanic exhibition?" i said to the guard. "Oh that doesn't open until Monday" came the reply. I promptly turned around and went straight back to the cashier and demanded a refund, apparently it had been happening all day. Why did the sign not indicate when the Titanic exhibit opens? Why, can you imagine what % of people ask for their money back?

First on anyones list of things to do in Victoria is visit some gardens...sounds hilarious right? Well having been there these gardens are nice, they have been landscaped into some old mine or something. But how nice are gardens really, once you've been there for 10 -15 mins its like, OK its nice, can we go. But this is the main place that they tell you to see, so once you've finished here its all over. Do you know how much it costs to see the Bushart Gardens in Victoria - this is the kicker $25 per adult!!! Dont believe me have a look here on there own web page....http://www.butchartgardens.com/admission/rates.php
So for 4 adults to walk around some gardens, that were supposedly donated by the people who owned them back in 1800 and whenever, it costs $100. Are you fcuking serious???

Take my advice people, give this place a miss, especially for day trips. If you are planning on going further into Vancouver Island sure drive through and wave, but other than filling up with gas, i wouldn't waste anytime here, or money for that point.

More Taxes/Fees and Charges.

http://www.encorp.ca/cfm/index.cfm?It=925&Id=48

Yep, they've done it again people, the good folks in charge of solving our problems seem to only have one solution to anything. that is, slap a tax on it, then set up some monopolistic company to profit from and get rich on a poorly organized govt initiative, on the backs of BC's consumers. This time its electronics. The BC government have just established a new tax or fee on electronic goods like computers and tvs. The charge is $15 for a CPU and $5 for a laptop.

If you are like me, you dont buy anything here anyway, (i buy almost all my electronics in the US) i recently even purchased a 50" plasma down there and brought it back in myself, saving tax, saving hundreds of dollars, and now saving myself some communisitic recycling fee...

I am all for recycling and giving the environment a break, but this doesn't solve problems, all this will do is drive consumers costs up, and ensure that some politicians brother, (who runs the program) will profit and get to drive around in a car that their own education level could never afford.

make the business of recycling attractive, by giving tax breaks to companies who offer it, setup some compeitition, encourage industry and commerce to meet the challenges...nope all of that too hard, the easy answer, slap a tax on it, this year it's $15, in 5 years it will $100....when the lame asshole running the recycling plant can't do it on budget...