Aquarium Date at the Shaw Centre for the Salish Sea

A boutique downtown spa whose signature ritual ends in a 62-jet hydrotherapy tub, inside the Magnolia Hotel on Courtney Street.

Victoria Film Festival's single-screen cinema on Douglas, where beer is served, most screenings are 19+, and the film has actual soul.

Three heated adults-only mineral pools at the Boathouse Spa, a eucalyptus steam room, a stargazing sauna, and Mount Baker filling the horizon across the strait.

UVic's repertory cinema since 1971, cheap tickets, locally famous popcorn, and films the multiplex wouldn't touch with a pole.

A Turkish-craft studio on Broad Street where you press coloured glass into a lamp for a couple of hours, then take the glowing thing home.

A tunnel-like entrance on Broughton Street opens into a five-storey atrium with a mosaic-glass ceiling, and it costs nothing to stay.

Sidney's teal boothed diner on Beacon Avenue, turning out stuffed Belgian waffles and five different hashes three blocks from the sea.

Canada's only Booktown, where the plan is to pick a book for each other and compare notes over a cinnamon bun.

Emily Carr's 1864 yellow Italianate childhood home in James Bay, tours by donation, and Dallas Road is right down the street.

Forty classic cabinets, twenty-five pinball machines, and the largest pinball collection in Western Canada, in atmospheric Trounce Alley.

Seventy-plus shops, a Purdys Chocolatier, and a food terrace with skyline views to wait out the rain in downtown style.

An 18-hole haunted-house mini-golf course downtown with rocking chairs, transforming portraits, and a private ping pong lounge for the rematch.

Two islands stitched by a wooden bridge, an Airstream in the woods, and a hot tub pointed at the stars.

A full Nordic circuit on a restored 1943 barge at Ship Point, three saunas, cold plunges and hot tubs with the Inner Harbour lapping beside you.