We spent our last morning in Victoria at the Royal BC Museum and loved it. It was the perfect way to spend the morning and the museum itself was fantastically done.
We got there right around 10 am, when it opened for the day and stayed through lunch. It was a good amount of time to see everything while also letting the girls play with the different exhibits.
The museum has three floors, but the exhibits are all on the second and third floor. On the second floor, the focus is on Natural History as one walks through exhibits featuring forests, oceans, and deltas along with what British Columbia would have looked like in the past and how it could possibly change in the future.
It was all very well done and the different animals looked extremely life like! We first came across a huge wooly mammoth and the girls just kind of looked at it in amazement. We reminded them of how we saw the paintings of wooly mammoths in the cave back in France and how wooly mammoths also lived here in Victoria a long time ago. There was also a few little games for the girls to check out, although they would have been a better fit for slightly older children.
We walked through the sea, delta, and forest exhibits and loved seeing all of the animals while learning about their habitats. Our girls’ favorite though, was probably the underwater exhibit that was fashioned to look as if you were in a submarine. Our girls enjoy watching Octonauts and they were thrilled to run around learning about all the sealife as they pretended to be on the “Octopod”.
After that, we headed over to the museum’s feature exhibition. At the time, it was a wildlife photography exhibit that was really neat to walk through but I believe on May 18th, it will be an exhibit on Egypt.
Once we had checked out all the amazing photographs, we headed upstairs to the vast Human History section. Here, we explored the Living Languages Exhibition first and listened to different native languages from around British Columbia. My favorite was sitting in The Cradle of Language while listening to lullabies.
Next, we checked out the First Peoples Gallery and learned more about the Native Americans who originally lived in and around Victoria. There is so much to see in this area and once again, the museum added amazing details to really make it feel like you’re actually visiting a ceremonial house in one spot. Totem Hall was another favorite of mine.
From there, we went to the Modern History Gallery. The museum had an entire little town set up that looked and felt like an actual little town. It was amazing to walk through and see how houses were set up in the early 1900’s. We also enjoyed walking through a full scale replica of one of Victoria’s early ships, H.M.S Discovery.
Once we finished exploring all the exhibits, we headed back to the first floor to grab some lunch at Sequoia’s Coffee. There are also Food Trucks outside, but they all seemed a bit more messy than we wanted so we passed on those this time.
After we left the museum, I took the girls across the street to the grounds of the Empress Hotel and let them play under the cherry blossoms for a bit while Aaron grabbed our luggage from our hotel. They had a great time enjoying the flowers and sunshine while building fairy houses.
Once Aaron came back with our things, we boarded the ferry and headed back to Washington.
We loved our visit to the Royal BC Museum! It was the perfect way to end our stay in Victoria and I’m so glad we were able to spend the morning there.
Our whole trip to Victoria was amazing. Our entire family loved it and we can’t wait to go back again someday to explore more of the city and the rest of Vancouver Island. I highly recommend making a visit if you ever have a chance.
Thank you so much to Royal BC Museum for sponsoring this post!
