Part 3: Home again

Coming back home from all that wining and dining was a bit harsh ("Let's just stay up here...no one will notice!") but the spoils of our wine tasting victories helped to ease the pain. That's all the wine we got. I believe somewhere in the neighbourhood of 42 bottles. And now we're just settling into things, settling into life, thanking God for all His riches and His faithfulness, seeing where life takes us next...Cheers!

Part 2: More the Naramata side of things

Our room at The Naramata Herritage Inn and Spa. I believe it was the Okanagan Room. Fabulous place!!! Continental breakfasts to die for! Housemade granola, assortment of dried fruit/berries/nuts to add in, yogurt, fresh fruit salad, house baked 7 or 9 grain bread, housemade preserves, cheeses, and some other bread product (usually danishes, croissants). And of course, the orange juice/coffee/tea as well. Claw-footed tub in the room, balcony with bistro set out our back door, view of Okanagan Lake...amazing.

A little blurry but I just had to throw in a picture of us with a massive lilac bush. Naramata seems like a real-life Starshollow (Gilmore Girls). Everywhere you walk smells like lilacs and there are giant lilac bushes absolutely everywhere. They have a town peacock and peahen, Harley and Pearl (we met Harley on one of our evening walks). We even went to their May Day festivities and saw their "royal party" and grade 3 and 4 students dancing around the May Pole. What a place!

Mmm, Sumac Ridge. We had dinner here of salmon on a bed of roasted veggies and some leek compote with a half litre of their white Meritage. Before we even ordered our server came out with 2 glasses of their Pinnacle wine, compliments of them, because they heard it was our honeymoon. We still have no idea how they knew this. Seriously folks, we've pretty much exhausted all possibilities. In any case, I think we finished our meal off with some kind of cheesecake (mascapone? ricotta?). Such a nice staff, such good food and wine, we'll be back.

The last winery we visited, Mission Hill. How gorgeous. I could try to describe all the beauty-the bell tower, the outdoor amphitheatre, the view-but I know I can't do it justice. Seeing is believing! This is us in the vineyards...thanks to the man who invented timers on cameras.

And the last full day we were honeymooning we went up the Kettle Valley Railroad and walked (I couldn't call it a hike) to Little Tunnel. I didn't bring runners on the honeymoon so I did the 8km round trip in flip-flops. Several blisters and 20-30 minutes of walking in the rain later, we made it back to the car (it was so worth it though!) and headed back to the spa at the Inn for our couples massage and had dinner of halibut with a Lake Breeze wine for dinner at The Wine Bar in the bottom of the Inn. Fab food-yet again!-and our server was so nice.

Part 1: The Golden Mile(ish)

I find myself, on this gorgeous Friday morning, sipping some hot water and lemon and realizing that I got up 1.5 hours earlier than I intended to (attribute this to the 2 hour nap I took yesterday, trying to sleep off a migraine) and realizing that I've been slacking on my blog.

So here are some honeymoon picturers. Nothing too exotic (sorry to disappoint), but we headed up country to do lots and lots of wine tastings. We stopped at Nk'mip, Desert Hills, Burrowing Owl, See Ya Later Ranch, Inniskillin, Tinhorn Creek, Jackson-Triggs, Hester Creek, Blasted Church, Sumac Ridge, Hillside Estates, Therapy, Elephant Island, Lake Breeze, Mt. Boucherie, Quails Gate, and Mission Hill. Whew! I think that's all of them. We aso carted around our own "wine tasting kit"--a box of Premium Plus Crackers and two 1.5 litre bottles of Dasani.




I love-love-love-love-love to BBQ and we were fortunate enough to be staying at the summer home of Mike's family friends who were gracious enough to offer it to us and had a BBQ...we never used the oven once for dinner:) This was our first meal, complete with bubbly that Heather brought back from Oregon for my last birthday and the first flowers Mike ever bought me. I waited a while to get them (it was worth it to see them in the hotel room after the wedding) so they came on the honeymoon too...there was no way I was leaving them at home to die!

See Ya Later Ranch with the tasting house in the background. Such a cute place, great view, they love animals, and the tasting lady couldn't have been any nicer!

But check out the jugs at Jackson-Triggs!

Amazing view! The hippy taster lady wasn't the most personable of the bunch (after a long drive to get there) but it was still a pretty neat place to go to and the wines were yummy. The signs leading up to and away from here read "Covet thy neighbours wine"--right on.

Ahh, Burrowing Owl. Quite possibly our favorite. We had lunch at their restaurant and it was amazing...I had the warm hazelnut crusted goats cheese salad, Mike had the house baked vegetable focaccia sandwhich, and we finished off our meal with their lemon balm frozen white chocolate parfait. We had our meal with a half litre of sauv blanc. I nearly died.