Victoria is cooler than you think, but also warm — in February!

A VIBRANT LITTLE CITY, VICTORIA’S SLEEPY REPUTATION NEEDS AN UPDATE

Standing on a harbourside lookout, bicycle helmet in hand, I take in the panoramic scene of Victoria’s downtown as tour guide Paul Rayman tells me things about my old hometown I had no idea about. For instance, it rapidly grew into a city during the gold rush, populated by opportunistic outfitters from San Francisco looking to vend the necessities of mining life. Go figure.

Visible are the city’s icons — the legislative building, Empress Hotel, and the bright baby blue Johnson Street bridge, in the midst of being replaced. It’s been 15 years since I moved away, and it’s been fun to see this place through the eyes of a visitor, although I do deploy my institutional memory at least once per block (“Hey, look, there’s a Cora’s where the Smitty’s used to be!”).

I have come with a motive, and that is to find the city’s coolest new spots. You see, Victoria is a vibrant little city — a fact that people in my adopted hometown of Toronto are often reluctant to accept. Perhaps they went to Expo 86 and did a day trip to the island, visiting Butchart Gardens, or maybe they just know it’s a place populated solely by the “newlywed and nearly dead” and double decker buses. Whatever the case, in some circles the B.C. capital’s reputation as a sleepy faux British tour- ist town has staying power.

But Victoria’s coolness is actually an open secret, welldocumented in travel stories that have come before this one, including an exhaustive New York magazine online feature last year. Even Buzzfeed has found enough to praise to come up with “28 reasons to fall in love with Victoria, B.C.”

From the time you arrive at the airport — whose defining feature is a work of public art outside consisting of four giant colourful sculptural flowers that tower over all around them — you can feel the pace of life slow to an easygoing, jogging, dog walking kind of speed. Victoria has a laid- back whimsy, which is also active — thanks to comfortable outdoor temper- atures 12 months of the year. (And flowers in February.)

Even the bike for my beerthemed Pedaler tour is the prettiest darned thing I’ve ever seen, a seafoam cruiser designed locally by Lochside Cycles. Founded four years ago by Rayman and his wife Rose, The Pedaler grew from their observation that Victoria should have local-insider-infused culinary bike tours, and the couple are now doing a booming business.

It’s a good thing the tour is beverage- focused, since I am basically still full from all the eating I’ve done up until this point. The Pedlar offers food and coffee themed tours, too, but I’ve tackled that part on my own over the past couple days.

Arriving in the city, I made a beeline to Victoria Public Market, opened in 2013, on the ground floor of what was once the Bay, and is now a condo development called the Hudson. I have fond childhood memories of getting malts from the hotdog stand in this place.

There’s no malt shop there now ( business opportunity, someone?), but the market offers a bounty of tea, treats, groceries and gourmet lunch counters, from local foodie mainstays including Silk Road Tea and Vikram Vij’s Sutra, with its delectable curried kale and navy beans. I chomped more than my fair share of samples from Salt Spring Island cheese, and chased them with flavoured balsamic vinegars good enough for drinking ( really, by the sample- spoon size at least) from Olive the Senses.

I skipped the famous tea at the Empress, in favour of vegetarian tea at Venus Sophia, a kitchy spot in Chinatown ( possibly the world’s smallest, at one block long) that serves finger sandwiches with edamame spread, and has a tea list a mile long.

This trip I eschewed dining at the old favourites — such as decades- old Re-Bar, which serves the most flavourful vegetarian food of anywhere I can think of and Beacon Drive- In, which offers onion rings and root beer floats on the edge of Beacon Hill Park — in favour of trying new things, such as North 48, the city’s fun, upscale modern diner, whose gourmet comfort food — including homemade “cheeze wiz” — and extensive menu of tiki drinks lived up to the hype. (I may or may not have licked my dessert plate clean.)

By my third day in the city, getting on a bike to cruise around town was probably a good idea. The hoppy part of the “Hoppy Hour” tour began at Spinnakers, Canada’s oldest brew pub, where a leisurely beer flight with views of the sea was pleasingly paired with a chocolate-truffle one. The ride to stop number two took us onto the bike-friendly Galloping Goose Trail — 60 kilometres of smooth, paved path on an old rail line — and over the scenic Selkirk Trestle. Here the relatively new Brewery District, located in the industrial part of town, is home to a small handful of local brewers, including popular neighbours Hoyne and Driftwood. We stop at Moon Under Water (named for Oscar Wilde’s perfect pub) for some well-timed snacks in a beerhall atmosphere.

A comfortable return trip brings us to Swan’s Hotel and Brewpub — a downtown classic known for its awardwinning beers, where we relax with six little glasses, including my favourite oatmeal stout.

Returning to Pedaler HQ in a light drizzle, the bike strikes me as an apt metaphor for the place — healthy, happy- coloured, fun to get around on, lovingly crafted, and, unfortunately, too big to fit in my suitcase.