Tea Tasting at Silk Road in Chinatown

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

On the Sidney waterfront, the makers of colour-shifting Empress 1908 Gin hand you bitters and garnishes and let you play bartender.

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

Victoria Film Festival's single-screen cinema on Douglas, where beer is served, most screenings are 19+, and the film has actual soul.

UVic's repertory cinema since 1971, cheap tickets, locally famous popcorn, and films the multiplex wouldn't touch with a pole.

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.

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 tiny chandelier-lit Fisgard Street patisserie of glossy macarons and cream-filled Paris-Brest that sells out before you have decided.