Celtic Session at the Irish Times Pub

Free live music every night inside one of Victoria's most gorgeous rooms, in the old Bank of British Columbia, until 1am.

Order The Volcano (it's on fire), book the karaoke room, and accept that tonight is going to be a story.

Twenty-nine craft taps, a late kitchen with a following and a historic brick courtyard open till midnight every night in Victoria.

Cash-only, peanut shells on the floor, bras stapled to the ceiling: Victoria's most beloved dive bar open until 2am.

A bright, clattering Mexican brunch room inside Market Square, where the benny lands on a potato pancake under pulled pork.

Down Trounce Alley in Victoria, a snug tapas bar where the sherry list is one of the biggest in Canada.

Four escape rooms by Bastion Square, 60 minutes each, with actual hidden compartments and a lot to learn about your date.

A Market Square cantina since 1985, with over a hundred mezcals and bartenders who'll happily narrate your descent into agave enthusiasm.

A 1909 bank vault of a bookshop on Government Street, on every world's-best-bookshop list, and it costs nothing to wander.

Nearly forty pinball machines, beer, and pizza in Chinatown, where competitive instincts emerge one quarter at a time.

Victoria's neon-lit Korean pocha pub, where you pile the table with tteokbokki and pour each other rounds of soju all night.

Chinatown tortilleria where heirloom corn gets nixtamalized overnight and pressed into tacos that embarrass every other taco in Victoria.

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

A 50-seat Fernwood wine bar in a charmingly creaky heritage building, built for daily-changing small plates and old-world wine.