VICTORIA AND VANCOUVER ISLAND - British Columbia: Including the Alaska Highway - page 147

you're desperate (banks give a better exchange rate). Get a feeling for the hotel's history by
joining a tour.
MM ROYAL BC MUSEUM
Canada's most-visited museum and easily one of North America's best, the Royal British
Columbia Museum (675 Belleville St., 250/356-7226, 10am-5pm daily, adult $22, senior
and youth $16) is a must-see attraction for even the most jaded museum-goer. Its fine Natur-
al History Gallery displays are extraordinarily true to life, complete with appropriate sounds
and smells. Encounter an Ice Age woolly mammoth, stroll through a coastal forest full
of deer and tweeting birds, and then meander along a seashore or tidal marsh. The First
Peoples Gallery holds a fine collection of artifacts from the island's first human inhabitants,
the Nuu-chah-nulth (or Nootka). Many of the pieces were collected by Charles Newcombe,
who paid the Nuu-chah-nulth for them on collection sorties in the early 1900s. More mod-
ern human history is also explored here in creative ways. Take a tour through time via the
time capsules; walk along an early-1900s street; and experience hands-on exhibits on in-
dustrialization, the Gold Rush, and the exploration of British Columbia by land and sea in
the Modern History and 20th Century Galleries.
The Royal Museum Shop stocks an excellent collection of books on Canadiana, wildlife,
history, and First Nations art and culture, along with postcards and tourist paraphernalia.
The museum's theater (9am-8pm daily, additional charge) shows nature-oriented IMAX
films.