Room With A Boo at The Magnolia Hotel

Trick-or-treating may have stopped in childhood but celebrating a haunted Halloween never gets old. VITA discovered there’s no better way to get your Halloween thrills and chills than in historic Victoria with a stay at The Magnolia Hotel. Throughout October the Magnolia Hotel is offering guests a Room with a Boo package and so we opted for bikes instead of brooms and headed to Vancouver Island to check out what treats the Magnolia Hotel is handing out this Halloween.

It must be said: biking to Victoria from Vancouver is the perfect start to a Halloween themed getaway. By braving the elements and cycling through hidden neighbourhoods and down old country roads you’re guaranteed to sight a few ‘haunted’ houses and real scarecrows. My boo (see what we did there?) and I highly recommend the Lochside Regional Trail, which will take you straight from the Swartz Bay ferry terminal to downtown Victoria.

The Magnolia Hotel is located steps from Victoria’s Inner Harbour and the best boutique shopping and restaurants. The hotel kindly stored our bikes upon arrival and we were greeted in the lobby with delicious pumpkin spiced tea to warm us up after our very wet, 90 kilometre ride. Our room on the sixth floor had an amazing view of the harbor as well as of historic buildings in downtown Victoria but even better than the view was the in-room fireplace and huge soaker tub.

The concierge handed us a map of The Magnolia Hotel’s curated trails program, which with the use of complimentary hotel bikes, takes you on a lovely tour of Victoria hotspots. Included in the Room With A Boo package is a guided ghostly walk for two with Discover the Past Walking Tours, led by one of Victoria’s foremost storytellers, John Adams. With his tales of ghosts and ghouls haunting Victoria’s historic sites, even if you don’t believe in the unseen, you’ll leave educated about Victoria’s grisly past.

After all that fresh air and exercise we were treated to a dinner at Victoria’s Olo Restaurant. Farm-to-Table can be used to describe plucking a few greens from your backyard but Olo Restaurant takes the concept to a whole new level. The Olo kitchen is filled with quality B.C. ingredients including an emphasis on Island-raised whole animals and sea fare caught in local waters. We sampled a five-course menu which included a succulent octopus plate that even though chef and owner Brad Holmes described the octopus as the “by-catch” of crab traps, we thought this sea critter was a main event on the menu. Each plate was perfectly paired with a unique wine and ended with desert featuring fennel ice cream, which still has us licking our lips.

The next day we explored the rest of what downtown Victoria has to offer. Our walk led us to Silk Road Tea store where we drank cold organic tea mixed with eyeballs (Longan fruit), a spectacular tea based apple cider, and a cold drink made from their Chocolate Panda mix where if you add almond milk and a bit of alcohol at home, you’ve got a Bailey’s with health benefits. 

Because treats at Halloween are a must (and we can only take so much candy from the kids) we also indulged in Magnolia’s turndown service that delivered Halloween themed chocolates by local Roger’s Chocolates.

The Room With A Boo package at Magnolia Hotel delivers all the trick or tweets necessary to demonstrate that Halloween can be fun no matter what your age, so book now and be prepared to be scared! —Michelle Gadd