City centre Victoria hides an unusual number of serious chocolate makers and bakers within a few walkable blocks, and most visitors walk straight past every one of them. This two-hour tour links seven together — all independently owned, all chosen by us locals who knows who makes what and why it's worth your time.

You'll start at a shop built around small-batch, ethically traded bars, where you'll learn to taste chocolate properly instead of just eating it. From there the route threads through the old commercial heart of the city: a chocolatier hand-rolling truffles in the back, a bakery locals are quietly protective of, and a family pastry counter that hasn't needed to change a recipe since the 1950s.

More than ten tastings are built into the walk — truffles, macarons, a dense chocolate tart, cream-filled chocolates and fresh-baked pastry — plus three you won't see coming: a savoury chocolate sample most people don't believe until they try it, a thick drinking chocolate, and a Nanaimo bar made the way this island intended.

Between stops, your guide fills in the parts of Victoria you'd otherwise miss: the buildings, the businesses that lasted, the ones that didn't, and the stories that never made it onto the heritage plaques.

The pace is easy. Around 2.5 km in total, roughly 45 minutes of it actually walking, spread across two hours. Groups are capped at twelve, so there's room to ask questions and talk to the people behind the counter.

The tour finishes at historic Rogers' Chocolates on Government Street, in the middle of Victoria's best browsing stretch and a few minutes from the Inner Harbour.