The Best Places to Drink and Stay in Victoria

A small, romantically lit cocktail bar built around a single obsession: Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century naturalist whose travels shape every drink on the menu. The cocktails trace his expeditions through flavor, from bright and citrusy to smoky and feral, one of them made with a spirit flavored by raw venison suspended in the still. The corner banquette is exactly as good as it sounds.

A boutique hotel a block from the Inner Harbour, the Magnolia leans into Victoria's Victorian mood without becoming a museum piece. Sixty-four rooms keep the scale personal, soaking tubs anchor the bathrooms, and the team has a habit of noticing when guests mention a birthday online and quietly doing something about it. Silk Road tea at turndown, locally made chocolates, hot cider in the lobby when it's cold. It holds a Michelin Key.

The china on the afternoon tea service was a gift from the Queen in 1939, which tells you roughly everything about what kind of hotel this is. The Fairmont Empress is a grand railway-era property facing Victoria's Inner Harbour, all ivy-covered limestone and English pageantry in a city that takes its Englishness very seriously. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Key. Renovation has freshened it without sanding off the delightful self-importance.

Wind Cries Mary is a red-brick cocktail bar on Bastion Square where the menu is laid out like a forest, so you pick a drink by whether you want leaves (floral) or roots (earthy). It has made a Spirited Awards regional top ten for international restaurant bars in Canada. The kitchen is serious about its fried chicken, which makes this a good first stop that tends to become the whole night.