Mix Your Own Gin Flight at Victoria Distillers

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

Greater Victoria's only aquarium packs 3,500 local sea creatures and a touch pool into one low-key Sidney afternoon, closed Wednesdays and Thursdays.

Victoria's first board-game café, eight dollars buys you all night, a game guru, paninis, milkshakes, and at least one minor dispute.

A downtown day spa where Ayurvedic massages have a near-cult following and a rainy afternoon becomes a whole personality.

Belly up to Chinatown's tea tasting bar, argue over blends, then disappear into a spa for two.

Oak Bay's beloved tearoom, two decades strong, where the Big Muckle Giant Tea for Two arrives in a tiered tower of house-baked scones and shortbread.

Willow Stream Spa inside the Fairmont Empress: fireplace, harbour view, two therapists, one mineral pool, zero reasons to care about the weather.

Canada's largest used bookstore, three floors and roughly a million books, best navigated with a five-dollar scavenger hunt and no agenda.

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

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.

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

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.

Victoria's long-running Ethiopian-Eritrean room, where dinner is one shared platter by hand and the closing act is a from-scratch coffee ceremony.