Category: My Blog

As South Carolina’s capital city, Columbia is a popular tourist destination that offers a host of attractions that your kids will love. The city’s selection of zoos, parks, museums, and theatres each offer your child a new way to explore and learn about their world, all while having an excellent time.

Riverbanks Zoo and Botanical Garden

Kids of all ages love going to the zoo, and Riverbanks Zoo and Botanical Garden does not disappoint! Home to more than 2,000 animals, Colombia’s favorite zoo is the perfect day trip for you and your kids. They will love seeing all of their favorite animals in real life, and you will love the beautiful scenery that surrounds each exhibit. Make the most of your day with scheduled animal demonstrations daily, or wow your children with an up-close animal encounter with an education animal. If you or your child have a particular favorite animal or animal group, sign up for one of the behind the scenes Adventure Tours for a truly unforgettable experience.

Columbia Canal and Riverfront Park

If you and your kids enjoy spending your days exploring the outdoors, consider taking a day to discover all of the fun that can be had at the Columbia Canal and Riverfront Park. There are many different paths for you to follow, and clearly displayed signs on each path help to make the trip educational as well as fun. Pack a picnic lunch with your kids’ favorites and plan on spending a relaxing day outside.

EdVenture

EdVenture is the ultimate children’s destination in Columbia, SC. With a mission to create new generations of lifelong learners, EdVenture is an amazing children’s museum that will fascinate your kids and help to bring out the kid in you. Unlike traditional museum exhibits, the exhibits at EdVenture are designed with kids and their natural curiosity in mind. Your children (and you!) are encouraged to interact with, climb on, and explore everything about each exhibit so that you will all gain the most from your experience.

Columbia Marionette Theatre

The Columbia Marionette Theatre is one of the most unique playhouses you will find in Columbia. Using innovative puppetry and artistry, the theatre and its performers aim to entertain and educate children and adults-and they do it with pizzazz! Performances are short, around 45 minutes, so they are great for children of all ages. Adults will also find the performances fascinating, as the theatre wants grown ups to enjoy themselves as much as the kids do.

Garden City – Victoria

Victoria, BC, is the city where British Columbia provincial government located, it sits at the southern tip of Vancouver Island. It is an exquisite beautiful quiet city, known as the “Garden City”. Under the name of the British Queen Victoria, influenced by traditional British lifestyle, it makes you feel like being in Europe. It is famous for “the most beautiful gardens in the world” the Butchart Gardens. Butchart Gardens covers 30 acres, and it is divided into new territory Garden, Italian Garden, Japanese Garden and the Rose Garden four parts, tourists are all amazed its wonderful ideas, ingenious design and exotic flowers. it is at he southwest of Vancouver Island at Canada’s southern end, is located in the north latitude 48 ° 25 ‘, longitude 123 ° 22’, it is the provincial capital of is British Colombia Canada, it is also the largest city of Vancouver Island’s. The weather of this city is mild, belongs to maritime climate. In January it will be 4? ~ 5?, average frost period only 20 days per year. 27 inches average annual rainfall, the rainy season is in winter, from June to August rainfall is only 2 inches. The population is 320,000.

City Overview

Victoria is on the southeast part of Vancouver Island, it is also a tourist holiday destination. Moderate climate and beautiful scenery, four seasons are all filled with fragrance of flowers, so in Canada many elderly retirees will sell their house and buy a new one here, so it is also called “paradise for retired people”. This is a standard city garden, the magnificent stately parliament building as the center, surrounded by century-old Queen’s hotel, the Royal Wax Museum, marine gardens and museums. That is tourist area, full of green lawns and colourful gardens, large flower pots are hung on street lamps. The traffic is ordered, occasionally you can see old carriages walk on the streets. Horse heads are decorated, wearing colourful, shiny carriage; coachman wears ancient European style clothing.

While this is geographically closer to the United States, but you can fell romance of Britain everywhere, many street and store names still preserved as British writers, such as Shakespeare, Byron and Dickens. The public transport here is mainly double-decker bus, University of Victoria near Beacon Hill Mountain and sea, where the houses are very beautiful, the house owners are mostly retired people, they maintain their courtyard carefully, as well as their gardens water fountains and street lamp. Every courtyard here is a wonderful scenery. The community rules here say there must be flowers in the front yard and the rooms should not rent to young people outside. In this city 80% population is aged people. They constitute the main consumption of the city. Around two or three in the afternoon, you can see lots of aged people’s shopping cart outside of supermarket, and café filled with elderly, here really is a paradise for the elderly.

Who would have thought that the District of Columbia is a safe place to drive? Not I! But according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the District of Columbia has the lowest rate of deaths per thousand (4.8) that occur on the roads. There are numerous reasons I believe that DC can boast this distinction.

First, since there is so much traffic in the DC area, motorists are stuck sitting in roads that feel more like slowly moving parking lots rather than driving. The Washington, DC metro area earned the distinction of tying for first place with Chicago for having the worst traffic in the United States. According to the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report, DC motorists spent 70 hours in traffic in 2009, and that was up from 59 hours in 2006!

On the positive side, the Washington DC area is second to New York in terms of percentage of commuters that use public transportation in the United States. The high usage of metro can in part be attributed to the fact that approximately 120,000 federal workers receive up to $230/month for transit expenses as an employee benefit. Federal workers make up approximately 40% of the metro usage. The fare subsidy program in effect means the DC Metro receives about twice the federal aid then other United States transit systems according to The Washington Examiner. The benefits extend beyond the federal level as employees in Arlington, Fairfax, Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties all receive some sort of subsidy for utilizing their local mass transportation.

In addition to Metro, the Washington area is served by rail, both commuter and express. There is MARC train service from Union Station to Baltimore to the northeast; to Martinsburg, West Virginia to the west; to Frederick, Maryland to the northwest; to Fredericksburg, Virginia to the south and to Manassas, Virginia to the southwest.

Traveling to and from work by bicycle is an athletic means that is gaining in popularity in the DC metro area, now 6th in the nation in number of bike commuters according to the Washington Post. There are approximately 45 miles of dedicated bicycle lanes around the area and more are planned as this means gains in popularity.

All of these options are necessary to move people around as of the people employed in the Nation’s Capital, only 28% are commuting from inside the city, 33.5% come from somewhere in Maryland and 22.7% from Northern Virginia and outlying suburbs. Understanding these transportation options is critical in determining where to live.