Nordic Sauna Circuit at HAVN

A 120-year-old garden in an old limestone quarry, where Jennie Butchart invented romance out of an industrial problem.

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

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

Victoria's Parliament Buildings flip on 3,000-plus light bulbs at dusk, and you get to just stand there with ice cream.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

A candlelit brick courtyard down a Victoria back alley, doing wood-oven Italian for 35 years and not sorry about it.

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

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

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