Vinyard Terrace Restaurant (Kelowna, Canada)

We talked about lunch in the last vacation post. It was a classy lunch at the Cedar Creek Winery Estate. The restaurant is called Vineyard Terrace Restaurant (or some spots say Terrace Restaurant).

Cedar Creek Winery Estate is absolutely gorgeous. You can see the pictures on the day recap HERE. To sit on their outdoor terrace to look out at the vineyard with a little bit of breeze and eat a delicious meal was really a fantastic experience. Especially with great company.

Let’s check out the food! 🙂

Wines

We only had 3oz-6oz glasses, not the entire three bottles.

Appetizers

Wise Earth Carrot Salad

Can’t find this one’s name but I think something to do with heirloom tomatoes or something….

I’m not sure if you’ve ever had those nantes carrots variety but we love it at our place. We recently started eating the multicolor ones and they are so good. This one with a little bit of spices to aid the taste but not overpower the actual carrots’ natural deliciousness was awesome!

Main Dish

Wild Moon Organic Pork

Seared B.C. Albacore Tuna

Dessert

Maple Apple Tart

Callebaut Chocolate Mousse

Okanagan Fruit

Okay, I’m guessing you all can figure out that I got the Okanagan Fruit. I always complain about how the alternative for lactose-intolerance is either sorbet or fruits. I’ve never honestly enjoyed a fruit cup more than this one. Okanagan fruits are so good. The peaches and berries. This fruit cup was with sabayon which they described as a sweet hollandaise sauce. I only learned then that hollandaise sauce is just egg whites, same as sabayon, which is why I could have it and it is a really good balance.

Overall, this was a great restaurant experience. We all enjoyed the mains as well. The dessert was delicious as well as the appetizers. The wine was quite good as well. I had the 2014 Riesling. My cousin has the 2015 Senator’s White. My husband, my mom and my aunt shared a bottle of 2014 Gewurztraminer. I guess I should have mentioned it up with the wines.

Have you ever eaten at a winery restaurant? If so, where?

Vancouver + Kelowna: Trails, Winery & Family BBQ!

Kelowna is located in the Okanagan Valley area in Canada. It is beautiful and stunning and just absolutely breathtaking to explore. The day after my cousin’s wedding, we only had a late afternoon gathering at my cousin’s home for a barbecue with the family. We decided to head out for some hiking/walking trails to see capture some lovely scenery and get some exercise. We went out to a winery for lunch and then rounded up the day with the barbecue. That is the quick runthrough.

Kuiper’s Peak Mountain Park

Kuiper’s Peak Mountain Park is a short 5 to 10 minute trail. There are mountain bike trails as well. This park’s wildlife is still recovering after a forest fire in 2003.

Bertram Creek Regional Park

Bertram Creek Regional Park also suffered from the forest fire in 2003. It is a casual walking trail along the Okanagan Lake. There’s a beach and a little area to walk out to take pictures.

Cedar Creek Winery Estate

We went to Cedar Creek Winery Estate to have a quick lunch and then went out to walk around. Suffice to say, it was absolutely gorgeous. I’ll be talking about the lunch portion in a separate post.

Family Barbecue

The family gathering was fun and grand. My cousin’s home is beautiful. They had food catered there and they made burgers for everyone as well. There was this cool sparking wine or cider (local) called Bling. It tasted really good.

The view from my cousin’s place is absolutely breathtaking. It kind of makes its a life goal to try to move out to Kelowna eventually just to live in this quiet little city.

That’s it for Day 3!
Drop by again to check out the Cedar Creek Winery Estate Restaurant post later this week!

Vancouver & Kelowna: The Drive to Kelowna!

Its the start of the vacation posts! This year’s vacation was Vancouver and Kelowna. It marks a few firsts and some pretty awesome experiences.

The first day of vacation was an early flight out of Montreal to Vancouver. This is memorable because its the first time I’ve taken a trip on a plane with my husband and the second flight he has ever taken. Thanks to our fantastic captain that flew the Air Canada flight to Vancouver, it was a smooth take off and landing. We landed in the morning at the airport, waited for quite some time for our luggage and then met up with my mom who left for Vancouver earlier than we did to spend some time with friends at the airport.

We arrived!!!

The next thing was picking up the car.

We originally had reserved a full-size car but after we talked to the guy at Avis, he suggested that we upgrade to an SUV to fit us, my mom and my aunt and cousin that we picked up shortly afterwards and accommodate everyone’s luggage and still feel comfortable. We ended up with the Ford Explorer. Its been a while that my husband drove such a huge vehicle and just look at all these buttons and controls. We had to take a moment to sit there and figure it all out.

After the car pick-up, it was time to meet up for lunch at Fortune Terrace Restaurant for dim sum. The restaurant review post will be up a little later this week! Chinese food in Vancouver is spectacular so its one to look out for!

With our bellies filled up and all the luggage packed in and everyone aboard, its time to drive out to Kelowna! For this part, I’m going to let my trusty Samsung Galaxy S6 camera do the trip justice (and it doesn’t because its just breathtaking) and look at all that amazing scenery!

With that, we’ve entered Kelowna! Crossing the Okanagan Lake on this bridge was just amazing! We checked into our first ever Airbnb experience and it was smooth and awesome!

That night we headed out to a restaurant called Basil and Mint which I’ll also do a short restaurant review about! The funny story is that without even expecting we ended up meeting up with our other family that also chose that restaurant and had a huge reunion before my cousin’s wedding the next day.

In the night we headed out with some of my cousins to this new(ish) bar/brewery in downtown Kelowna. I was a tad tired so only had a local apple cider drink. We called it a night pretty early after some good laughs and caught up a little.

That’s it for Day One! Nothing super eventful but it was full of great scenery! 🙂
Drop by soon to check out some restaurant reviews/recaps for the two restaurants mentioned and the next day(s) of the vacation!