Our Short Retreat

The vacation time P and I get is rather sporadic and at times not when we'd absolutely like it. But as it turned out, we had a full 8 days of no work. We spent 6 of those days away from North Vancouver which was so nice and refreshing to be away, especially without a laptop or computer. I surely needed that break.

So as it turned out, we certainly did not get off to a good start. I started getting a really bad headache on Saturday night. It turned into a tremendous migrane that was worse than anything I had ever had. I woke up about 1 hour (11:30pm) after I was finally able to get to sleep with the feeling that I wasn't going to hold onto my dinner.

Things just got worse until I realized it was food poisoning that was doing me in. Things finally ended somewhere in the 2am hour when I was finally able to fall asleep. We had a small cup of ice cream that night topped with food colored smarties. I'm deeply alergic to them obviously. I can remember back while I was small that I had this problem. I guess I still have it. I'm sticking to nothing but Swiss Chocolate now!

Lesson Learned - But I assure you the rest of our trip was incredible.

Our first stay was in Penticton at a 4 star B&B. The views were incredible, along with the incredible gourmet breakfast at 8:30am. We didn't do any sleeping in on this trip. But we did lots of relaxing, touring and getting to know more of Canada that P and I have never seen and just enjoying being away from the RAIN!!!! Yes the entire time away, Vancouver was very rainy.

This was the view from our Balcony in Penticton.

We got to see a few t-storms, which I was really looking forward to actually. This pic below is a set of those clouds. I'm still waiting to get a lightening shot though!

I think the highlight of the trip was the 2 wineries we visited.

The first was Mission Hill Winery (more like a castle or villa) found at the below post and in these two pics. We had a nearly private hour long tour along with tasting and learning so much about the wines among the 4 of us.

P already highlighted one of our really cool visits to the Train Museum. We walked a lot in Osoyoos as the weather felt more like Vancouver. We were lucky!

We also visited Nk'Mip Wineries which is owned by the local native people to Osoyoos. It's the only Aboriginal Winery which we were so interesting in saying we had visited.

The highlight for me on this tour was tasting the Reisling ICE WINE. This stuff is like liquid candy, a complete teaser to the taste buds. I'm not sure how much it costs outside of Canada but a standard dessert wine bottle was selling from $59 to $70 a bottle. We decided to go with the $3 sampler instead. The reason for the high price is because the yield is much lower and must be produced at a minimum temperature of -8C. I'd highly recommend trying some if you never have. It's certainly the best dessert I've ever tasted.

The landscape around Osoyoos was incredible as seen above. We always seemed to be somewhere at just the right moment. It was so odd like that but rather cool. I'll save a few more pics for one last post to come.