Hatley Castle & Gardens

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

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

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

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

Canada's narrowest street, three feet wide at points, once a gambling den, now vintage records and ice cream.

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

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.

A candlelit, scented journey through the afterlife with 250 real ancient artifacts, at Victoria's Royal BC Museum.

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

Where Fort Victoria stood in the 1840s, now there are heritage brick, café patios, and an artisan market.

A one-acre jewel-box garden built by a prince and princess after decades of war and internment and love against the odds.

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

Two completely different waterscapes on one thin strip of sand, swans on one side, Olympics on the other, and it's free.