After spending a week at the Calgary Stampede, Ryan and I made our way 8 hours west to Penticton, where he grew up. To be exact, Ryan grew up in Naramata, which is 20 minutes outside of Penticton, in the heart of wine country in the Okanagan. To say this area is beautiful is simply an understatement. The first time I visited Ryan out there was the summer of 2009, and I’m nearly certain my jaw dropped when I saw the view from his backyard. His parents property has a view of Okanagan Lake on one side, and a vineyard on the other. Needless to say, I love going out there whenever I get the chance. The farther I can get from the city, the more relaxed I feel, and by the time we reach Naramata, the hectic nature of Calgary has usually drifted far away and I am generally in a beautiful scenery and delicious wine transe.
Usually when Ryan and I head to Naramata, we make as few stops as possible, trying to get there as fast as possible. This time around, we drove slowly, stopped often to walk around, as well as made a longer stop in Kelowna to enjoy dinner with Ryan’s older brother, Cam. By the time we reached Naramata, it was dark, but we were feeling good after a relaxing drive. We spent a week in Naramata, and our days mostly consisted of relaxing mornings eating breakfast outside with a view of the lake, while debating what else we would do with our day. For Ryan and I, a visit to Penticton is simply not complete without a visit to our favourite book shop, and a few of our favourite restaurants. As a fairly organized and in control person (control freak would probably better describe me, unfortunately), The Book Shop in Penticton should really not be the type of place I enjoy. It is jam packed with pretty much any used book you can imagine; there are rows and rows of shelves, very little signage, and books literally from the ground up to the ceiling. For some reason, I love this place, and when Ryan and I go in there, we are generally lost amongst the shelves for upwards of an hour, and we almost always buy something. I may be short of cash right now, but I am never too short on money for a good book!
On top of a visit The Book Shop, a trip to Penticton is not complete without a visit to Il Vecchio’s, which is easily the best and most affordable sandwich shop in the city, and they do lettuce wraps for people like me with picky stomaches. While in Penticton, we also enjoyed sushi, sandwiches from the Bench, and multiple free samples from the vendors at the Saturday Farmers Market, all of which were awesome. The only other place we usually like to visit that we didn’t make it to this time around is the Dream Cafe, a Bohemian restaurant with accentric decorations, cool staff, great food, and live music from time to time.
Being that Ryan lives a 5 minute walk from the beach and it was 40 degrees every day that we were there, we made regular visit downs to the lake to swim. Nothing beats jumping off the Naramata dock into the cold water on a hot day…. except perhaps ice cream! If ice cream isn’t available though, this is definitely a great option for cooling off. We spent hours lying around reading and enjoy the sun, and generally enjoying what we have fondly come to terms with as our funemployment. While we were visiting, Ryan’s parents were on their own vacation so we had the house to ourselves, and it was nice to fully decompress after a busy first week back. Amongst all of our relaxing, we did spend some time thinking about the future and what we will do for future employment. Unfortunately funemployment doesn’t pay the bills! I have come to terms with the fact that money is not what is going to make me happy, so we didn’t spend too much time thinking about jobs, and spent most of our time enjoying the present moment.
On our final weekend in Naramata, we did a BBQ with Ryan’s brother, as well as enjoyed dinner with Ryan’s parents, before making the journey back to Alberta. This time around, we had 2 cars, and I had the pleasure of spending 8 joyous hours with myself listening to podcasts, and singing way too loudly!