Laura Ramoso: The Calm Down Tour

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

A coal baron built a 39-room sandstone castle, died before moving in, and accidentally created Victoria's best self-guided date.

A woolly mammoth, a walkable old BC town you can actually wander through, and a First Peoples gallery that'll stop you cold.

A 1890s Fernwood church turned theatre so intimate the actors skip the mics, and the pubs are right outside.

More than 85 hand-built dioramas inside the Empress, featuring one of the world's largest model railways and zero self-consciousness.

Victoria's 1913 grand hall still fits 1,400 seats under an ornate ceiling and a wildly varied bill worth dressing for.

Hold a tarantula at this tiny downtown menagerie of 50 species and discover exactly how brave your date actually is.

A genuine 1908 castle with free Italian, Japanese and rose gardens, peacocks, and a film resume that includes Professor X's mansion.

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

Eighty-plus years of volunteer theatre in a 175-seat Rockland coach house, plus a gallery, a bar, and absolutely no parking.

Seven galleries, an 1889 mansion, twenty thousand works, and a Japanese garden with a real Shinto shrine waiting out back.

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

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.