Tea Tasting at Silk Road in Chinatown

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.

A tunnel-like entrance on Broughton Street opens into a five-storey atrium with a mosaic-glass ceiling, and it costs nothing to stay.

Steak frites and French red by candlelight in a Chinatown schoolhouse that doesn't take reservations for two, so arrive early.

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

Nearly forty pinball machines, beer, and pizza in Chinatown, where competitive instincts emerge one quarter at a time.

Chinatown tortilleria where heirloom corn gets nixtamalized overnight and pressed into tacos that embarrass every other taco in Victoria.

Seventy-plus shops, a Purdys Chocolatier, and a food terrace with skyline views to wait out the rain in downtown style.

A full Nordic circuit on a restored 1943 barge at Ship Point, three saunas, cold plunges and hot tubs with the Inner Harbour lapping beside you.

Yunnan-province home cooking on Fisgard: handmade dumplings, rich beef noodle bowls and food that punches above its price tag.