What’s Up Week 17 & My Weekly Adventures: Its been a few days and I’m finally back!!

Welcome to the duo segment post of What’s Up and My Weekly Adventures!

Due to the lack of things going on and if you haven’t noticed, my unannounced hiatus for the past 4 days, its been rough and mostly just out of control on the work life personal side of things. I did give a warning last week but things just got more intense. Hence, to save everyone an overload of the same thing, I will do both segments together in this post. Lets start with Whats Up and move onto My Weekly Adventures!

READING

• Forever People (Review)

I finished up Forever People just in time for the blog tour so I will keep things brief here so you can see my thoughts over on the review. Overall, its a good story: good premise and compelling characters to say the least.

PLAYING

• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

The husband and I finished up The Vanishing of Ethan Carter very soon after we started it. Its a pretty creative indie title with a lot of mystery and nice execution on gameplay and narration. Plus, the game sets itself in a visually stunning backdrop. I’ll be editing the playthrough after last week’s Rime. It’ll take a little while to get things back on track on my end.

WATCHING

NOTHING…absolutely nothing. I can tell you that I’m planning on catching up with all the Marvel movies in the next little while: Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Ant-Man and the Wasp as well as all the other Pixar stuff in case it gets removed from Netflix at some point and get around to rewatching The Shape of Water for the next Movies and Tea episode.

BINGING

• My Daughter’s Boyfriend (女儿们的男朋友, Season 1)

Currently binging: The Brightest Star in the Sky, Put Your Head on My Shoulder, Z Nation (Season 1), Idol Producer, Rush to the Dead Summer (rewatch)

My Daughter’s Boyfriend is a 6 episode variety show which follows the daughters of 4 different famous fathers (actors and soccer player) and watch how they interact with their boyfriends over a few weeks time as they comment on various aspects on relationship and how their views and their daughters view on marriage, life and everything else changes. These shows usually can get very heartwarming and China has a lot of these variety shows from different angles and in the end, other than watching the relationships here whether its the love life or the father-daughter one, the main thing here is usually opening up the channel of the importance of communication and family and probably talk through some issues that everyone at one point or another might encounter in dealing with these different situations. Its 6 episodes and I thought it was really good. I’m not going to write about this show but it seems to already be greenlit for a second season so I’m looking forward to it.

As for the other shows, I’m pretty much watching the same things. Due to having a lot of overtime at home, I ended up rewatching Rush to the Dead Summer in the background while trying my best to stay on track with my two current favorite shows The Brightest Star in the Sky and Put Your Head on My Shoulder. I’ve been also semi-watching Z Nation with my husband but not completely focus although the show really doesn’t seem to have that much depth in Season 1 yet. The new thing this week is Idol Producer which I went back to watch to see how boy group Nine Percent started because a good few of them is now Nex7 which I think has some potential to do well and is the focus on Master in the House which I didn’t get a chance to catch up with this week but will get back to soon as well as Great Escape and such.

What have you been watching/reading/binging/playing?

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Suffice to say not a ton happened so I’m going to keep it short and sweet as its pretty much the upcoming post recaps and such that I’ll be talking about. A few upcoming plans and perhaps some seasonal segment revivials and all that great stuff. The few days off reminded me of how much I miss writing and editing and recording so I have a few things to also deal with and get back on track on all projects.

Restaurant Discovery: Mama Dumplings

Its been a crazy hunt looking for  a dumpling place not on the island of Montreal or more specifically Chinatown and by complete spontaneity, I drove by one  a week or two ago and since then have gone two times with my friend. I’ll have a post soon about it.

Movies & Tea Podcast: Crimson Peak

If you didn’t see the reblog last week, Movies and Tea has a new podcast episode for Guillermo Del Toro’s Crimson Peak. My first time viewing feelings back when it released and this rewatch definitely had some differences.

Easter Weekend

Easter weekend was probably a mistake thinking back now with all the overtime but I think it also charged me up a little. We didn’t really do a ton for Easter weekend and mostly just relaxed and took advantage of the relatively nice weather and took care of some chores like changing tires and you know, taxes. However, my husband and I did go for a little walk in a park and its nice because the park itself has a lot of workout stations so I’m planning out some way to incorporate cardio with these exercises to get into shape. Add some changes here and there and whatnot. Only 7 weeks until my best friend’s wedding and I’m living in constant fear that I won’t fit into the bridesmaids dress at the lack of exercise, especially after this work rush. We are still working out the workout routines and such but the big plan starts in a few days after I’ve recuperated some energy.

Cute Kitty Pic

That’s it for this Weekly Adventures!
What have you been up to?

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!

Saguenay, QC: Parc de la Caverne Trou de la Fée

This year, my boyfriend and I had a big purchase: our house.  With a few other events budgeted in, we had to make cuts.  That went to cutting down on the vacation we had together in the end.  However, we did decide to take a trip since it was nice to take a breather, relax and just be together away from everything.  Thats what weekend getaways are fantastic for.

Our choice was Niagara Falls and Saguenay.  Seeing as we’ve already been to Niagara Falls two times in the last 6+ years, we decided to go back to Saguenay and do what we weren’t able to do last time.

The first one was scheduled for Day 1 for a cave exploration and walking and hiking trail located in Parc de la Caverne Trou de la Fee. What that directly translates to is “Fairy’s Hole Cavern Park”.  The park is actually very affordable with a guarantee of at least 3 hours of activities. Its separated into 4 parts.

The first part is going for the 15 minute cave exploring.  They are known for their wide settlement of bats, except summer isn’t the season and with some climate changes, its caused an irregularity from what the guide said.  Inside the cave, it was impossible to see anything so I didn’t even bother to take any pictures but I promise you, there is actually a shape of a fairy in there on the walls and there’s a little piece of history attached to it.  However, the walk to the cave had a few pictures.

Overview of the park area at the start of the trail

Looking back from the bridge over the falls

When you reach the other side, its a little bit of a hike and then you get to the cave, where we wait for a little bit and head in to explore.

Waiting to go into the cave!

If you recall, I actually did another cave exploration earlier this year.  This one had a little bit more maneuvering around rocks.  It had some narrow spaces but it was short enough to not be too much of a problem. There was three chambers to go through and some stairs to climb here and there. It was pretty impressive!

Coming out of the cave, the second part of the hike is following the path back, except when we cross to the other side of the bridge, there is an actual hiking trail to the Three Falls.  This trail does a loop and leads to an open area with three waterfalls.

Lots of water around the site! Love it!

Near the falls!

A beautiful rainbow

The hike is a simple family trail.  Its easy and comfortable.  Coming back into the loop, you come back to the main path and this time, instead of heading back the way we came, you go down to walk on the old electric dam facilities which now forms a tunnel with some information about what this site used to be used for.

As you walk through this, it is connected with some wire barriers like this one, which leads to wooden pathways.

This path eventually leads to the final part of the trail which is the Green Corridor/Coulée Verte. This part is yet another hike but a super calming and beautiful fun.  The only thing is this one gets a little more challenging with narrow paths and some slippery uphill areas, rocky paths and that sort of thing.  Hiking shoes are useful not only for the caves but also for this trail.

During this path, I gained my new obsession on this trip, aside from waterfalls and flowing rivers: assorted berries and mushrooms, especially along mossy areas.

The Green Corridor was long and curvy.  It was pretty tiring as the ending of this trail, mostly because our day started at 6am and a 6 5+ hours drive.  However, it was a great preparation for warming up the muscles and getting ready for our actual hike the next day.

If you are in the Saguenay Lac Saint Jean area, this area is a must do.  Its not expensive and you get a whole lot of activities to do which makes it completely worth it.  Its part of getting in touch with nature.  You can always choose to not do the cave and just do the trails and that costs less.  Or you could choose to do everything including the 350 feet high zip line crossing.  I wasn’t brave enough to do that.  I’m not actually sure of the actual height but its pretty high so I wouldn’t be surprised if it is.

Thats Day 1 in Saguenay for us! Getting in touch with nature, a bit of hiking, lots of water, calming and refreshing! I loved it! 🙂

Day 2 coming up tomorrow! 🙂