first thing today in the morning was taking the bus to victoria china town[001-035], where even the lamp posts[001] have a chinese design. victoria's chinatown is the oldest in canada, and second oldest in the world. it is also the home of the narrowest street in canada, namely "fan tan alley"[008-020], which has actually a lot of shop entrances, that lead to pretty big stores[010-012] with all kind of exotic stuff (notice the awesome feng shui compass[012]). we also spotted an alley cat[014-015], and two more cats[017-020] in a furniture shop, sleeping on rugs. so cute. next we walked through dragon alley[023-033], and came out on fisgard street[034-036]. a few more minutes of walking and we got to the victoria public market[039-053] at the hudson, where we saw all kinds of delicious food. we ordered a lunch box[048] containing beef, rice and salad, and later fish and chips[053]. after our lunch we walked through the streets towards the harbour area[054-064] where we booked a whale watching tour. the loyal reader of my bLog might remember that we had no luck so far with our whale watching tours. we tried it in iceland, and new zealand and never saw a whale. so we were hoping that this time we might spot some of the big fellows. the "B.C. Whale Tour Ltd." promised a 100% whale sighting guarantee. and this time we were really lucky - we spotted some dolphins (but we were too slow with our cameras, so no pictures of them), and a group of orcas[089-090,093-094,097,099-101,103-112,114,116-122,124-129] swimming along the shore line out to the open sea. wohooo, finally we did it - so cool. whales are really cute creatures. nina also got to america for the first time, and - clever her - without the procedure of taking finger prints, filling out millions of forms, getting the ESTA and APIS stuff done, etc... all it took her was booking a whale watching tour in canada. back on land we headed for some more victoria sights, such as "the empress" hotel[139-140,142], the oldest (and most likely also the most expensive) one in victoria. on belleville street we saw the BC parliament building[144,148-149,151,153-163], with the statue of queen victoria[148-149,151] in the foreground. the royal BC museum[165-169] was already closed by now, and so was the victoria bug zoo[172-173] on douglas street - too bad, i really would have liked to see that (although nina did not - i have no idea why). we were tired, exhausted, and hungry, and finding a restaurant that was not too pricey and had something for the both of us, became a challenge. so we soon gave up, and went to the next bigger mall, the bay centre[176-179], and had some taco. not very fancy, but quite okay. after a 30 minute ride on the bus back to our hotel we fell asleep instantly. what a great day. track for day 05.