Date night in Victoria, planned end to end

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

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

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

An 18-hole haunted-house mini-golf course downtown with rocking chairs, transforming portraits, and a private ping pong lounge for the rematch.

Victoria's Chinatown tasting menu that critics keep whispering 'Michelin' about, with just enough seats to feel like a genuine secret.

Fort Street Korean tapas and cocktails: low-lit, late-running, and serving a 'Squid Game' gochujang dish with the world's most appropriate name.

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

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

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

Eagle Wing hunts orcas and humpbacks in the Salish Sea while a marine biologist narrates and you quietly grip the bow rail.

The Chateau Victoria's hotel bar, Canada-nominated, with rare vintage spirits and leather banquettes built for slow, low-lit evenings.

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