Victoria

A limestone quarry pit became a garden across a hundred years. Standing on the sunken floor, the walls rise twenty metres on every side.

The legislature and the hotel ring the water while floatplanes land between them. On summer evenings 3300 bulbs light the outline of the legislature.

Indigenous holdings and natural history share one building. One floor rebuilds an early twentieth century street at full size and you walk through it.

Painted houses float in a row on the water with people living in them. Seals surface where the dock finishes and take fish from visitors.

Orca pods work this strait all year, and humpbacks join them in summer. The small inflatables are quick but take every wave, so survival suits go on.

A big park meets the sea, and peacocks walk its lawns. At its southern edge stands the marker where the road across the continent begins.

A coal fortune built this house in 1890 with thirty nine rooms in it. One staircase climbs all four floors, and the stained glass changes at every level.

The oldest Chinatown in the country holds an alley ninety centimetres wide. A few single door shops still trade inside it.

Concrete runs 800m into the water and people walk out and back along it. No rail runs along it, so the edge is left alone on a windy day.

From late October salmon push up a creek half an hour away by road. The creek runs shallow enough that their dorsal fins break the surface as they go.

A stone mansion built in 1908 by James Dunsmuir, son of the coal magnate behind Craigdarroch Castle. It now stands on the Royal Roads University campus, and visitors walk the gardens. Hollywood has used it several times as a school.

First lit in 1860, it was the first permanent lighthouse on Canada's west coast. Next door, Fort Rodd Hill is a late 19th-century coastal battery that guarded the harbour, with gun positions and magazines intact. A causeway leads out to the lighthouse on foot.

The wooden house where painter and writer Emily Carr was born in 1871. Rooms are set out with Victorian furniture, each explained through scenes from her writing. It has often kept summer-only hours, so confirm the season's opening first.

A wooden walkway raised over the forest on the Malahat summit north of Victoria, ending in a spiral lookout tower. Up top, the sea among the islands spreads out with distant Mount Baker beyond. Coming down, you can take the slide through the tower's core.

A 55km bike path on an old rail line, running west from Victoria to Sooke. Being a former railway, the grades stay gentle and wooden trestles carry it over the valleys. Commuter cyclists crowd the city end, so keep to the right.

Small round boats carrying a dozen or so passengers hop between docks around the Inner Harbour. They save the walk to Fisherman's Wharf and other landings. On summer Sunday mornings several boats turn together to music in a ferry ballet.

A small garden laid out on a rocky slope by Prince and Princess Abkhazi, who settled here after the Second World War. Japanese maples and rhododendrons grow among the rocks. Their old house is now a teahouse looking over the garden.

A low mountain north of downtown whose Indigenous name is PKOLS. A road runs nearly to the top, so a short walk opens up a view in every direction. At sunrise the view reaches mountains across the water in the United States.

Nineteenth-century brick warehouses arranged around a central courtyard. Hotels and stores served the gold rush crowd on this spot, and small shops and restaurants fill it now. Performances take over the courtyard in summer.