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Rosemarie and I went white water rafting with Liz and Tom on the Thompson River (near Lytton, BC).

It was lots of fun. It wasn’t that XXXXXXTREME, I was the only one who unintentionally fell out of the raft, but we still had perma-grin the whole time. It was a nice hot day so we jumped in and swam at every opportunity, and took turns sitting right on the front for maximum splashability. There was even one rapid we got to go through in the water hanging on to the rope on the sides of the raft.

Liz gracefully getting back into the raft, probably after Tom pushed her in.

A classic Rosemarie picture on our lunch break. +1000 points for them having dinosours for dessert. :D

Like I said, I was the only person that fell out of the raft… out of the whole group of rafts… hahahha oops. I swear it wasn’t on purpose, I just fell out! It wasn’t too scary, at least I felt like I really got my moneys worth. ;)

We camped at a BC Parks site for the night and then drove home to Vancouver the next day, via the Othello Tunnels near Hope, and Hope Diner. Another very hot drive home with no AC, ack.

Jill and Joe had a long stopover in Vancouver on their way back to Adelaide so we met up with them for dinner downtown at Forage. Everything was super delicious and it was awesome to catch up again. I had seen Jill a few months ago when I went to Adelaide, but I hadn’t seen Joe in a LONG TIME!

The waiter suggested the cheese puff for dessert and it’s a good thing we listened to him because it was SO DANG GOOD. It was a profiterole with neufchâtel cheese filling, with ice cream, gin soaked blueberries and some kind of cordial sauce all around. MMMMMMM. The other dessert there was berry adult jello panna cotta that was also very good, but almost forgotten after the cheese puff.

Forage is cool because ALL their ingredients are locally sourced. We really enjoyed all the dishes we tried… octopus, carbonara, stinging nettle risotto, mushrooms… highly recommend.

Thanks to the Dafoe’s to treating us to a great meal!!

Forage Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato

I redeemed by birthday voucher for a Picasso pedicure at Bloom. Those are hand painted lemons!

Lesley, Stephane, Scott and I went camping for one night at Cultus Lake. We played many games of Settlers (of which I lost all of them), and ate tacos and burgers and generally lazed around. We took the party island out for another spin. Cultus Lake is so warm!! Camping is weird when there is a fire ban though, you sort of run out of things to do when it gets dark.

More skeleton push practice at the Oval. Note to self, bring bug spray for twilight sessions because there are SWARMS of mosquitos. Who’s bright idea was it to have so many still water features around the facility, yeesh. I seriously got about 30 bites in half an hour. But this was a useful session, I now have a few new technical things to focus on for a bit.

Other unpictured fun stuff that happened:

  • We went to Charles and Ankie’s wedding at the fancy Terminal City Club downtown. Open bar, woot!! It was a fun wedding, although we couldn’t understand a fair chunk of it because we don’t speak Cantonese.
  • Our board games group tried an escape room, and failed. It was hard!! We got through the first two rooms but ran out of time trying to figure out the half dozen puzzles in the final room. The operator guy did say we got further than average though (does he say that to everyone?). We also came back to our place to play a few games of Seven Wonders.
  • Stephane made bacon wrapped cheddar stuffed burgers for Burger Friday. I thought they would burst into flames on the BBQ but they were fine!
  • Mary Ellen and Paul came over while they were in town for a wedding. Mary Ellen wanted to try purple yam and cheese ice cream but unfortunately Shoppers Drug Mart was out!! They only had plain purple yam, so Scott got that instead. It is Barney purple and tastes like… those cheapy styrofoam cones imo. The debate of the month is what type of cheese it would be in the yam and cheese variety. So far Kraft Singles type is leading. EWWW.
  • Work drinks at Tap & Barrel. We have to make this a more regular event!
  • The worlds smallest blogger meetup. We ate yummy tacos from La Taqueria and then went to Rain or Shine for ice cream. I had malted milk chocolate honeycomb in one of their delicious homemade waffle cones. Yum.

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Teri organized for Scott and I to go to a fancy winemakers dinner with her and Lindsay at Seven Stones winery in the Similkameen Valley. Teri works with Seven Stones, so she knew George, the winemaker already. The dinner took place in the “caves” underneath the winery, where it was MUCH cooler than outside (thank goodness).

First course: Local Organic Peach Salad (grilled peach, arugula, bocconcini, white balsamic reduction), with 2012 Chardonnay

Light and tasty. I came to the dinner armed with antihistamines because I figured they would be using lots of fresh Okanagan produce, and unfortunately I am allergic to a lot of it. But it’s so good it’s worth it. The peaches were sweet and juicy and the balsamic reduction was amazing.

Second course: Smoked Duck (Fraser Valley smoked duck breast, dried berry, du puy lentil stew, cherries, red wine glaze), with 2010 Pinot Noir

Tender duck over tender lentils with pops of sweetness from the cherries. The only thing was that it was kind of hard to cut the duck in such a deep bowl.

Third course: Espresso Marinated Tenderloin (beef tenderloin, mushroom risotto, tiger blue crumble, roasted summer vegetables, plum and olive jus), with 2009 Meritage

Perfectly rare beef over creamy cheesy risotto, om nom nom. It was a huge chunk of meat but we all finished it all because it was so delicious. I loved the little baby zucchini pieces as well. Oh and the Meritage wine was really good, it’s sooo smooth. I don’t even usually like red wine that much! Too bad it’s $35 a bottle, ha.

Fourth course: Coffee and Dark Chocolate Mousse (chocolate mousse, espresso shortbread, berry compote, smoked vanilla whip, chocolate mint), with 2012 Cabernet Franc

OMG and then the dessert. The chocolate mousse was ultra smooth and not too sweet, with a perfect melt-in-your-mouth buttery cookie, and little bits of slightly sour berries to balance it out. Amazing.

George took everyone on a quick tour of the barrel rooms, pointing out the water feature (to keep the humidity levels just right) and the speakers from which they are going to start playing classical Baroque music (the particular vibrations are supposed to cause the yeast particles to eat more sugar and produce lower sugar, tastier wine quicker). Kinda neat. I suppose we will have to wait and see if that actually works…

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Starting the trip off with a beergarita with Teri and Lindsay while we waited for Braz and Lisanne. I feel like we need a flowchart to explain the group:

Scott –> friends with Braz (aka Marcus) (from Melbourne) –> girlfriend is Lisanne (from Edmonton but lives in Melbourne too) –> friends are Teri and Lindsay (live in Alberta).

The first day we went to a whole bunch of wineries close to Penticton and a tiny distillery that makes gin. There was one chardonnay that tasted like BBQ corn…. ew. We went to Bad Tattoo Brewery for dinner and drinks. The six of us each got a pizza each and then shared so we got to try 6 types (YUM).

The next day we bought a party island (and extra boat to float our cooler) and did the channel. That’s Lindsay and Lisanne in the front, and me, Teri and Braz in the back. Our drinks were perfectly cold (unlike last year camel pack atrocity) and umm… we drank a whole lot of them. It was funnnnnnn.

Waiting for a taxi back to the motel.

In the taxi. Hahaha.

The next day Lisanne and Braz continued on to Edmonton, and the rest of us moved on to separate hotels (although we would meet back up with Teri and Lindsay for our fancy dinner later).

Scott and I went out for breakfast ice cream at Tickleberry’s (nutritious!), where at least this time we knew to get child size. Seriously what kind of child size comes with two flavours??! (I had salted pretzel, and salted caramel). I couldn’t even finish mine, I wish they had infant size.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing in different locations. We went to the beach on South part of Okanagan Lake but it was way too windy so then moved to the North part of Skaha Lake. We ate a fancy-schmancy charcuterie board at a fancy-schmancy winery (Painted Rock) on their patio with great panorama views of the lake. Then went back to the hotel pool bar (!!), and then went back to Bad Tattoo for more delicious pizza.

Carolina BBQ – slow roasted brisket, mushrooms, shallots, spicy BBQ sauce

Black & Blue – roasted apple, blackberry compote, blue cheese, toasted malt

Their pizzas are awesome. Super thin crust, tasty toppings. We loved all of them. The only thing was that the Black & Blue pizza was totally different the second time compared to the first. They put waaaay more compote on the second time and it was a bit too much. But mmm that sweet-salty combination.

Avoid peak dinner time if you don’t want to wait in line, as it seems to be very busy in the summer.

Click to add a blog post for Bad Tattoo Brewing on Zomato

Saturday Scott and I went down the channel again, just the two of us on the giant party island. It was a very relaxed float, we just drank water, haha. We got quite sunburnt, oops.

Then we drove to pick up Teri and Lindsay and had a fabulous dinner at Seven Stones winery, which I am saving for another blog entry.


The last day Scott and I took the long way back to Vancouver, via Osoyoos because I really really wanted to go back to Platinum Bench for some ~~artisan~~ bread. We also stopped at a few more wineries too including Church and State which had some hilarious labels and Jackson Triggs to see if they had my favourite $9 chardonnay (they did not, haha).

We slow roasted ourselves the whole way back in the car at 38 ºC with no air conditioning. It was…. uncomfortable. And we drove past this amazing looking swimming hole, just before Princeton I think, but by the time I saw it it was too hard to turn back and I still feel regret even now a month later that we didn’t go back. It was like a mirage. I mean… WE MUST GO BACK.

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It stinks to have to work on your birthday, but it’s greatly improved when your (only) coworker has the same birthday too! The day started off shaky though, I couldn’t get the QC on the CT part of the camera to work and we had to call the service guy, who had to take the cover off the camera to investigate… while patients are piling up in the waiting room waiting and waiting and waiting. It was a bit stressful. Birthday cupcakes helped.

We had a bunch of people over after work for my birthday. Rosemarie organized a blind wine tasting. Everyone brought a secret bottle of wine (you can see them in the bags above), then Rosemarie made a list of the variety and the ~flavour notes~ of each of them (plus a few extras) and we had to taste the wine from little shot glasses and match it with the list. Plus say the country we thought it was from (basically a wild guess, haha), and the price ±$5. We had 4 whites and 4 reds, including one $7 bottle and one $30 bottle, hehe.

No one did particularly great but we did make some amusing conclusions. 1. $7 wine doesn’t taste good. 2. No one likes organic wine. 3. Vipi thought he didn’t like wine but turns out he’d just never had one sweet enough. He looooved the Barefoot Moscato, which basically tasted like syrup hahaha. 4. I really do like chardonnay, since I picked it as my overall favourite without actually knowing it was a chardy (for the lardy). 5. Everyone else’s favourite just HAPPENED to be the most expensive one…. after the prices were revealed. :P

Birthday gift headlamp. We ate chicken and vegetable kebabs and seven layer dip and all the rest of the wine, hehe.

Then we spent the weekend on the Sunshine Coast with Lesley and Stephane (Rosemarie and Lauren came too). We played lots of games (including this ultra nerdy version of Settlers!) and bummed around and PLANNED on going swimming at a lake, but then the next morning when we woke up it was suuuuper smokey out and ash was raining down from the sky. That was the first day where the smoke from the crazy forest fires drifted into the Vancouver area. Apparently there was a fire burning pretty close to where the lake was, so we didn’t go.

The smokey view from our balcony. The air quality index went up to 14 (10 is extreme!) in Vancouver. [It went up to 35 in Whistler!!] It was bad for several days. Made us all feel really tired and gross and everyone had a sore throat. Everyone was soooo happy when it finally rained and the air cleared up.

There are still a ton of fires around the province. It’s been a bad summer.

Found at the Shoppers Drug Mart downstairs. Purple yam and cheese. Interesting… interesting… is it worth $6 to try? What if it’s gross then I’ve wasted $6 and 1.5L of ice cream… but why would they even produce it if it wasn’t possibly good?

Celebration of Light fireworks night. I was extremely impressed with the sand couch these guys constructed. I was not impressed with the actual fireworks show. I would give China a 5/10 on fireworks (they lost 2 points for having those corny smiley face fireworks), and a 1/10 on music choices. Whyyyy was it so slow and sad and boring?? And cheesey!!

Other things that happened:

  • Scott and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. We didn’t go out on the actual day, since we were going out for a fancy-schmancy dinner in the Okanagan a couple days later (another post coming). We ordered sushi and ate it while watching TV from separate couches. ~ROMANCE~
  • Kevin, Lisa, Phil and Lesley came over for dinner and Cards Against Humanity. We drank large amounts of wine. My face hurt from laughing so much. So much inappropriateness.
  • We spent a few days in Penticton with Braz and Lisanne (another post coming).
  • We hosted a Masterchef finale 4 course cooking party at our place (another post coming).

 

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The first thing you see when you arrive in the international terminal of the Guangzhou airport is “Blenz” (a coffee company from Vancouver). But a hot chocolate there cost 55 RMB, or $11!!! ELEVEN DOLLARS!!!! That’s crazy even for airport prices!

The international area of the Guangzhou airport blows. Everything is really really really expensive and it’s really hot inside. And really boring. And you have to have a Chinese phone number to get access to the wifi (and even if you do find someone to help you get on the internet you can’t look at Facebook or Twitter or anything Google related. :/).

So, we were pretty happy to take advantage of China’s 72 hour transit visa on the way back so that we could leave the airport. (You just fill out an exit form and go into a special line at customs, and it’s free.)

We had about 6 hours. The subway in Guangzhou goes right to the airport so I asked the guy at the subway ticket booth where is good to visit and he circled a few stops for us. We picked the closest one, Tiyuxilu.

It was like 6 AM at the time so the subway was pretty empty. But we picked up more and more people on their commute to work at every stop.

Actually it was pretty cool seeing everyone on their way to work, and seeing the transformation from very quiet streets to extreme crowds and traffic in just a few hours. We wandered around random streets and alleyways, absorbing the chaos and buying bits of food along the way.

The main language there is Cantonese, but between my broken Mandarin and words I knew from dimsum we did just fine. Those baskets of pork and corn dumplings were 2 RMB each. TAKE THAT 55 RMB HOT CHOCOLATE AND SHOVE IT “BLENZ”. And they were delicious. We ate them beside other silent people fueling themselves for their day of work.

 

We also had a few steamed buns, one with some kind of garlicy green vegetable, and a giant ta siu bao one. 1 RMB each. And some of that fried turnip square thingy too. Yum.

We wandered through fancy areas and definitely NOT fancy areas. The alleys were super neat in a crazy overwhelming way (no pictures though, that would have felt weird).


We tried to sneak into the tallest hotels and office buildings so we could get a view of the city, but didn’t really succeed. I am curious what the 6th floor of this hotel was for..

Oh and to complete the experience, two separate groups of people asked us to take a picture with them. It’s always weird.. Oh sure I’ll take a picture of you and your group of friends… Oh you want us to be IN the picture… Oh you want separate pictures with each of us… umm ok… hahaha. My coworker who is from Guangzhou says that there isn’t that much Western tourism there yet so seeing a whitey is pretty special for some people. I just wonder what they do with these pictures??

Anyway after a few hours of wandering and eating we did a little bit of shopping at Uniqlo with our extra Chinese cash and then caught the subway back to the airport. Full stomachs and nice and tired out for the next long flight home. We had a really positive experience and I’m glad I got to show Scott a little about what I experienced back when I lived in Beijing. Way better than staying in the stupid airport.