Author: Heather

Day 7 Recap: golf & food & magic, oh my!

Friday was our last day in the Disney parks, but the day started early for my Dad, Tyler, and Kevin. They were up at the crack of dawn for a round of golf. Though it was cut short by rain, their 12-hole golf round brought them tons of joy, evident when my mom and I met them for lunch – they were drinking champagne!

After taking a short time to relax, we took a quick trip to Epcot (to view the “Canada” video – if the Disney people are reading this, it needs updating and more Drake!) before going to dinner at the Flying Fish Cafe (thanks to Aunt Elaine for the recommendation!). Our dinner was top notch. We left to check out the Electrical Light Parade at the Magic Kingdom and go on a few more rides before our trip was over. It was easily the loudest parade I’d ever seen, but we did get to go to the Hall of Presidents one last time, so the noise was somewhat worth it.

Our evening wrapped up at “Top of the World” bar, on the roof of the Bay Lake Towers resort nearby. A few drinks and many stories later, and we were home to bed.

The suitcase is now packed, and we’re about to check out of our hotel. Flying home tonight means we have the majority of today for some additional adventures!

view from the course…

champions celebrating!

the “Canada” pavilion at Epcot.

saying goodbye to Epcot

while enjoying at coffee

family shot!

riding the carousel like I’m riding a valkyrie?

January 23, 2016
Day 6 Recap: Animals & Deliciousness

On Thursday we went to the Animal Kingdom theme park. We also ate quite a bit of delicious food.

I hadn’t really planned on going to the Animal Kingdom, but Kevin heard there were giraffes and gators and got so stoked that we had to go. We saw lions, gorillas, fish, giraffes, monkeys, birds, rhinos, hippos, zebras, and much more. Kevin took a TON of photos and even some cool videos to share the memories.

Beside the Animal Kingdom is a hotel/resort called the Animal Kingdom Lodge. We dropped in to check out their view of the animals, and also stumbled upon a restaurant called Sanaa. According to their ‘bit’ they serve South African food, influenced by Indian flavours. Stoked to eat something flavourful and different from the typical Disney fare, we ordered a ton of food and devoured it all. Having rarely seen his kids eat anything more exotic than chicken fingers with sauce, my dad was in complete awe as we ripped apart naan and came down on all the various dressings in what can only be described as a feeding frenzy.

After lunch, we also saw some zebra mating rituals, also fortunately captured on video:

That evening, we went for dinner at a restaurant known for its wine selection, Artist Point, at the Wilderness Lodge hotel. Again we had wine for our appetizers and again for our dinner, stretching out our dining experience and enjoying some great wines from Washington state.

For photos of all that and more, see below:

January 23, 2016
Day 5 Recap: Enjoying some quiet time

We kicked off Wednesday morning with breakfast at Kona Cafe, a staple for our family trips, at the Caribbean Beach Resort. As has been the case so far on this trip, breakfast was decent but service was weirdly slow to get started.

I had their signature dish, Tonga Toast, which is basically a ginormous French Toast + Bananas sandwich, with tons of cinnamon and sugar as a coating. As you can imagine, it was delicious but not quite filling in the longterm. Everyone else had a large traditional style breakfast, and was happy with the results.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing at the hotel. Reading, napping, swimming, going to the gym, etc.

For dinner that night, we headed over to the BoardWalk Hotel for dinner at Trattoria Al Forno, a well-reviewed Italian restaurant. After many food-related misses this week, we were so pleased to have a long, relaxing dinner here.

The food, wine, and service were all excellent. We took our time with appetizers, mains, and multiple wines, and had a truly excellent dining experience. We followed it up with baileys and desserts at our hotel, and bed. Vacationing is exhausting!

January 22, 2016
Day 4 Recap: A quick 5-photo summary

We’ve already packed a lot into our first few days here. Yesterday we began our day at Disney’s Hollywood Studios for lunch at the Sci-Fi Drive In Diner. It’s a concept restaurant that reproduces the notion of being in a drive-in under the stars.

The decor was cool, but the food and the service were lacking, which is a pattern we’ve been noticing since arriving. A bit concerning to say the least, so we’ll be including more research in our restaurant decisions the rest of this week.

We did minimal exploring of Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and then headed back to the hotel for a quiet dinner, followed by drinks at a bar in Disney Springs.

Overall, a quiet day, and today is even quieter as we make some much-needed time to actually relax and ‘do nothing’ while we vacation. Photos below show the highlights of yesterday’s activities!

The coolest star wars thing we saw!

Enjoying some coffees and trying to keep warm.

At an Indiana Jones Adventure show!

Our “table” at the Drive-In Diner!

January 20, 2016
Day 3 Recap: Around the World in Several Drinks

The game plan for Monday was simple: go to Epcot and have a drink in each of the countries that make up the “Around the World Showcase”. It got predictably sloppy, but we topped off the day with a delicious dinner at “Le Cellier” at the Canada pavilion, and a good time was had by all.

The drinking around the world bit (inspired by this blog post and this one). It took around 6 hours to go through all the countries, including a stop for lunch that was clearly mandatory by the time we got to the Japan showcase.

Highlights included tequila shots at the Mexico showcase, and the best dinner we’ve had so far this trip.

As usual, Kevin kept us engaged with the camera and captured some amazing memories:

kicking off the afternoon with tequila shots!

drinking a Norwegian liqueur

visiting Italy for a jiffy

pumped to be in America!

lunch in Japan

Kevin said “look like a family”

later in the day, we went to an aquarium

we spotted Chip and Dale in a restaurant

didn’t stop us from snapping some amazing selfies though

and we finished off the night looking classy and having dinner at Le Cellier Steakhouse

January 19, 2016
“the word of the day is fakades…”

… that’s what Tyler told Kevin on Sunday morning after we entered and began exploring Disney’s “Magic Kingdom” park. We quickly realized he meant ‘facades’ and had a good laugh. But he’s right on about that being the word of the day. The Magic Kingdom is a imagination-driven park, designed to present a variety of illusions and fantasies and magical experiences. This often means that things, particularly buildings, will look one way, and be another. Streets that look like old-timey shops and apartments are often long stores or restaurants or rides. As Kevin pointed out, “simulacra” is also an apt term.

In any case, we kicked off our day with Sunday brunch at the Grand Floridian resort, followed by a day at the Magic Kingdom. We busted out our best Algarve-style saunter, and spent lots of time wandering and looking at things. Later in the evening, after a break/rest, we went back for 2 hours, at a time when the park was mostly empty.

This was good because there were no lineups, because Kevin was finally able to see a crowd-free area (it has been SO busy everywhere this weekend!), and because Kevin met Mickey Mouse!

As we were leaving the Magic Kingdom at 11:55pm last night, I noticed that a “meet a character” attraction was still open. We popped over, and were the last in line (a very short line!) to meet Mickey Mouse “backstage” for the night!

This was a totally bizarre experience. Kevin wasn’t even sure who Mickey Mouse was 3 months ago, and this Mickey actually spoke! We were all a bit flabbergasted, in awe, creeped out, etc. It was a lot to take in, and it was a great top off to a jam packed day of looking at unreal things.

Check out the photos below – Kevin’s photo taking skills are back in full-force 🙂

January 18, 2016
We’re at Walt Disney World all week long!

For all of this week, we’re on vacation at “the happiest place on Earth”, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Who’s “we”? It’s me, Kevin, my brother Tyler, and my parents. It’s mine and Tyler’s first trip in awhile, and Kevin’s first-ever Disney experience, so we’ll be taking many pictures and making many observations. We’ll be blogging everyday to share the highlights of those observations, and of course we’ll be sharing some of the best photos from the day.

We arrived early this afternoon at Saratoga Springs Resort & Spa, where we’ll be staying all week. We treated this as an orientation day. It involved lunch at Olivia’s Restaurant at Old Key West, shopping at Target, considerable naps, dinner at Raglan Road Restaurant, and an evening of exploration at Disney Springs and Disney’s Boardwalk Resort. We packed a lot in, and we’re looking forward to getting into the full swing of things tomorrow.

Here’s the best of our photos from today:

Tomorrow morning’s running route 🙂

The view while walking to Disney Springs from our hotel

Enjoying the show at Raglan Road Pub – Irish dancing in-house

More in-house Irish dancing at Raglan Road!

Trying to channel our inner-Frozen.

Getting in line to take the bus to the Boardwalk Hotel.

Me and my Dad in the Boardwalk’s lobby

An evening at the Boarwalk

A distant view of Epcot’s daily fireworks show

Kevin won this little tiger on the Boardwalk!

January 17, 2016
Exploring your backyard when you live in Wine Country
For the majority of my life, I grew up in Grimsby, a town in the municipality of “Niagara”. This particular municipality is home to the rather famous Niagara Falls, and it’s now also home to a flourishing wine industry.

The Niagara Wine Industry has grown significantly in the past 30 years. I don’t remember much about wine country growing up in this area, aside from driving past the occasional vineyard. Now that we’re back living in Grimsby (with my parents – hey Tony and Judy!), we’ve had the immense pleasure of exploring and enjoying all that this wine region has to offer.

The Niagara Peninsula wine growing region divides itself into two areas: Niagara Escarpment/20 Valley, and Niagara-on-the-Lake. The wineries in Niagara-on-the-Lake are closer to Niagara Falls and to the beautiful, historic village of Niagara-on-the-Lake. In our experience, it gets pretty busy as a tourist hotspot, so we try to visit the more local (for us) wineries in the Niagara Escarpment/20 Valley area.

The main benefits of that choice? Closer to home, fewer crowds, and the tastings are usually free.

To give you an idea of how the region is spread out, here’s a map. The 20 Valley/Niagara Escarpment is clustered towards the centre/left, while the Niagara-on-the-Lake wineries are clustered towards the right.

Keep in mind the map is a bit outdated, showing far fewer wineries that exist. There are currently 92 wineries in the Niagara Peninsula.

Of those 92 wineries in the region, we’ve only been to 30. While we’ve seen a lot, we have a long way to go!

But why exactly do we go to these wineries? To taste wine, to explore the beauty of the Niagara region, to buy wine, and to get to know the people and industry driving the economy in our neighbourhood.

Drinking wine, and really liking it, requires a lot of practice. That means trying a lot of different wines, and there’s no better way to do that than wine tastings. And when you combine in the beautiful weather and landscape of the Niagara Escarpment, satisfaction is guaranteed.

As for buying wine, one thing we’ve learned from living in Portugal is that the best wines don’t always get out of the country they’re made in. Think about it: if a wine is really good, then it’s probably going to be consumed at home. So even if you’re buying good wine from Australia, it still might not be the best version of what that wine producer makes. However, if you buy wine in your own backyard, you can taste everything they’ve made that year, you can choose to definitely get the best crop of what they’re producing. And bonus: you often do get to meet some of the wine producers.

With the decline of manufacturing, the Niagara Wine Region’s tourist industry has really positioned itself to be an economic driver of this region. Part of this includes the wide variety of events that they organize and curate each year. This past fall we attended the “Niagara Grape and Wine Festival” and “Wrapped Up in the Valley”. The events are well run and easy to understand as a participant. They provide you with clear maps, checklists, etc, and even their websites are easy to explore!

The two sites I use most when researching and booking tours are VQA Ontario, Niagara Wine Festival, Wine Country Ontario, and Twenty Valley Tourism.

This weekend kicks off the Winter Winefest, with a weekend of events in historic/beautiful Jordan Village. I can’t go, but I really suggest that you go! And the Icewine Festival will continue for the next 3 weekends – for $40, a Discovery Pass will allow you to try a food and wine pairing at 8 different wineries across the last 3 weekends in January. Give it a try! (don’t worry, there’s another festival coming up in the spring!)

I went to a party over the holidays, and was both surprised and impressed to hear how many people our age are out there exploring wineries, choosing favourites, and making recommendations.

In that spirit, here are our recommendations for must-see wineries on your next visit to the Niagara Peninsula. It’s a varied list, but is a great beginners list for understanding all that the Niagara Peninsula Wine Region brings to the table:
- Red Stone Winery
- Calamus Estate Winery
- Cave Springs Cellar
- Sue-Ann Staff Estate Winery
- Ridgepoint Wines
- Vineland Estates Winery
- 13th Street Winery
And of course, take a look at the photos we’ve taken on our winery adventures over the past few months:

the vines at Hernder

KP and I, picking up some wine at Hernder Estates

Arriving at Honsberger

Chickens at Honsberger!

the vines at Honsberger

set up for a wine and cheese pairing at 13th Street Winery

The wine shop at 13th Street

Kevin meeting wine maker extraordinaire Sue-Ann Staff herself

with my parents at Ridgepoint Wines

Kevin checking out the grass at Chateau des Charmes

tasting Calamus ice wine at home

A regular view: vines & lake Ontario!

Trying a sample at Rosewood Estates

My mom, Kim, and me at Tawse Winery
January 15, 2016
#tbt: Summer of 2015 and learning how to ‘beach’
Going to the beach is a sport in the Algarve. In the Algarve, people stay in between January and April, as it’s cold, most things are closed, and seasonal employees are out of work.

Come late April, early May, the Algarvieu (Algarvians) come out to play. And that means hitting up the beach with a level of deep seriousness.

To say the weather here is perfect is a complete understatement. As the spring and summer progress, and the weather gets hotter, you see the entire landscape becoming busy. More traffic, more people, more restaurants, and more sun!

Growing up, I’d only been to the beach a handful of times. The Page kids were not into beach life; no sand in our toes, no seaweed on our feet, no sunburns on our skin, thank you very much.

The Silva kids were the complete opposite. Spending most summers in the Algarve, with all their local friends in Alte, Kevin and his brother were total beach kids who spent many, many hours playing on the beach, swimming in the ocean, enjoying the sun.

I had a lot to learn, but luckily for me I was learning how to “beach” with the help of an expert.

In June, and July, we went to the beach almost everyday. And there were A LOT of beaches to choose from. Beautiful white sand beaches with crystal-blue water aren’t just for the Carribbean, people! Algarve beaches are famously beautiful, and we were spoiled enough to have multiple amazing beaches within just a 20 minute drive. In doing a bit of pre-writing research, I realized that some of the most “well reviewed” beaches are places we never went to, but it’s hard to justify driving an hour to a perfect beach when you have 6 almost-perfect beaches to choose from in your backyard!

So, how does one beach?

There are only a few things required:
- water, and lots of it. My beach bag contained at least 8 water bottles at all times.
- towels, 1.5 per person. I always had 3 towels for Kevin and I, so we could lay them out in a way that would keep ourselves and the towels sand-free
- hats. With the Algarve sun, a hat is essential
- euros – there’s a restaurant/bar at almost every beach, and the best way to end your day is with a bottle of wine at sunset (bars with a good wine selection are preferred).
- paddle-ball equipment – surprisingly fun, and good exercise
- tanning oil (for Kevin and all our Portuguese friends)
- immense amounts of sunscreen for me (I also had a pre-departure routine that included sunscreening my entire body, head toe)
- tanning technique – not as easy as one might think. You need to keep regular movement throughout the day to get an even tan all over your body. And pay attention to the sun, so you can angle yourself appropriately. Whether standing or laying down, you need to tack with the movement of the sun in order to get maximum rays.
- sunglasses. duh.
- e-readers. essential activity when you’re growing that tan on the sand
- beer in a cooler – not required every time, but you need both together whenever required.
- Google Maps – a required assistant when scanning the coast in search of a hidden beach!
It’s hard to get a proper list of the beaches we went to, because all our friends referred to the beaches based on local history and/or the name of the restaurant at the beach. And some of the beaches were “hidden”, aka only limited walking access, which means the only way you can find them is by carefully scanning Google Maps’ Satellite View. In any case, we did take a lot photos, which you can peruse below!
January 14, 2016
#tbt – Friendship reunion in Cannes!
In the time that I’ve been travelling, the glorious technology of iMessage & Group Chats has been a complete lifesaver, helping me keep in constant touch with some of my best friends in Canada. I have a group chat with 2 of my friends, Julie and Komal, that is essentially a haven of love, positivity, and support as we share each others fears and excitement while building our lives and careers from three different cities.

Komal is currently producing a documentary about female CEOs and entrepreneurs called “Dream, Girl“, and thus was invited to speak on a panel at the Cannes Film Festival this year in Cannes, France. You know France… just around the corner from Portugal? In a series of events that still seems to good to have been true, we all decided to go to France together in support of Komal and in search of sunshine.

The trip was four women in total: me, Julie, Komal, and Taylor (another very good friend of Komal’s and overall talented woman).

Cannes was all booked up by the time we planned this trip, so we opted to stay in Nice, which is just a 30 minute train ride away from Cannes.

Four women. Five days in France. Here are the numbers on what we got up to:
- number of delayed flights: 0 (win!)
- number of hours spent on the beach: at least 24 – we made a point of clocking hours in the sun
- number of small children that we saw poop into a bag while on the beach: 1 (gross.)
- number of parties that we snuck into: 1 (Komal said, “act like you belong”, and we went with it)
- number of parties we tried and failed to sneak into: 1
- number of creeps that we met: 2
- number of wonderful people that we met: many, many, many
- number of ways we tried to sneak in: 5
- number of celebrities that we saw: at least 10
- number of reunions with a friend from Cambodia: 1
- number of friends that Julie and I made while dancing till 7am: more than I can remember, that’s for sure.
- number of minutes that Julie and I were on the Cannes-to-Paris train instead of the Cannes-to-Nice train: 45
- number of panelists on the “Cutting Edge Collaborators: Women Achieving in Film” panel discussion: 5
- number of red carpet photos taken between the 4 of us: 20+
- number of vlogs recorded: 10+
- number of times we used the word “glam”: 50+
- number of times we were glam: always
- number of times we felt immense gratitude for this trip with these people: constant. Still feeling grateful as I relive the memories now
- number of photos we took: surprisingly few, and all the best are below.
Leaving Kevin to go to France just a week after his implants surgery (and on an expired travel visa!) was actually pretty scary. But it was worth every second of it to enjoy the unique experience of travelling to be a cheerleader for Komal. Also pretty cool because it means that Julie and I had 2 European-adventures together in 2015! It was a rough year, but the bright spots were very, very bright.

Airport reunion!!

On the beach in Nice, where we logged our tanning hours

The view from the window in our Nice Air BnB

All glammed up and ready for Cannes!

Couldn’t break into the party we wanted into 😦

That’s Haim the Band sitting behind us…

… but I’m excited because we’re drinking Ruinart Blanc de Blancs

strutting on the “red carpet”

Grabbing drinks with my friend from Cambodia, Alice (not pictured)

The day after mine and Julie’s night time adventure

Also the day of Komal’s panel discussion & red carpet event

Komal on the red carpet!
January 7, 2016