Sail Through the Maritime Museum of BC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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