Saturday/Sunday in the Okanagan

Saturday was our fruitless quest to find postcards in Vernon and area, and Sunday we drove back to Vancouver.  There's your TL:DR.  😜

 OK, fine, sorry.  Let's start off with the morning walk - sans Van, of course! - on a lovely Saturday, sunnier than the day before.  We walked through a different part of the resort area

and eventually found ourselves on a residential street looking across at two deer calmly grazing, paying us no mind. 

We saw a lot of deer in the Okanagan, perhaps as many as 15 over a few days.  No other wildlife, however, save for birds.

When everyone was up and at 'em, we set out on the day.  Yes, we did drive into Vernon to browse shops along one of the main streets, and we found postcards only in a coffee shop.  As nice as they were, they were also over $4 each, and artistic more than capturing photographic views.  I liked them, and I almost bought a few, but ultimately, we passed on them, finished our wandering and headed to lunch.  The jaunt into Vernon, however, did bring us past a view point for Kalamalka Lake, and on such a sunny day, the waters were especially beautiful.  So then, I present you with a photodump of the group of us admiring the lake and capturing its beauty.  And our own!

For lunch we headed back down to Lake Country.  The woman who served us the tastings at Monte Creek had recommended the restaurant at Gray Monk,

and so we took her up on her recommendation.  I'd had the wines before, but I'd not been to the winery.  Its setting on Okanagan Lake was handsome,

and we had a slightly late but tasty lunch.  A bottle of their Pinot Gris for us to share,

and a chilled cucumber soup

and some truffle fries for my own lunch. 

That was enjoyable.  All of us had a good meal,

and then it was on the road north to go back to 50th Parallel where we had reservations for tastings.  We had enough time to stop at a little regional park

and dip a hand in the lake waters (pleasant in the shallows, for sure)

and see a couple more deer.

I had honestly never heard of 50th Parallel before making the dinner booking for the night before.  I had no idea about their wines.  And, to be frank, the Pinot noir we'd had the night before struck me as thin and too tart and light to stand up to the steak.  The others, however, enjoyed it.   I did like the tasting room

and experience, though, and I came away with a few souvenir books.  Four of us tasted, Conrad was our driver. 

We came away with a few bottles, including the Pinot for Conrad.  I was disappointed to learn that, because of an early thaw followed by some further winter, they lost most of the 2024 harvest and had to use grapes brought up from the US.  Sorry, I know they're a business and need to survive, but when I taste BC wines, I want them to be made from BC grapes.  Ah well.

Dinner that night was at The Range, the restaurant/bar at Predator Ridge.  The food was food - my burger was fine, not noteworthy.  The setting outside was loud - I wished we had sat inside, especially as the gold bros on the patio got drunker and louder.  But the meal was nice for the opportunity to catch up with an old friend, Aaron. 

I hadn't seen him since his Dad's 80th birthday celebration last August, and that was the first time since our 30th high school reunion back in 2018.  So, it's been a while.  He permanently relocated to Lake Country after his partner, Lorna, died last year.  I was glad to see him, get some time with him alone at the bar before dinner, and have his company again.

And that, friends, was Saturday. 

Sunday really was the drive back to Vancouver.  Oh, there was morning walking on other lovely day. 

We stopped at Starbucks in Kelowna and then at Valley Graze Box in Merritt (good egg salad sandwich, but no, I did not try the dill pickle lemonade!). 

Another gas station stop in Abbotsford, and then we were at our hotel in Vancouver in time for dinner.

Vancouver, however, will wait for other blog entries.... 

Italy recap: on to Lezzeno

I need to say this before anything else:  Conrad deserves so much thanks and appreciation for doing ALL of the driving when we were in Italy.  He drove in cities (Bologna) and on freeways and on those narrow roads clinging to the hills that surround Lake Como.  For that last one, he merits some sort of award.  He got us to our last two destinations (and partway back to Rome, from where we flew home).

And kudos, too, to Van.  I don't think it's giving away any confidences to share that Van, like many, can be prone to car sickness.  No reading in the car for him.  And the front seat is better.  So he sat up there beside Conrad and provided excellent navigation.

Me?  I stayed quiet so as not to rattle anyone, chiming in conversationally from time to time, but otherwise occupying a back seat and reading when the landscape wasn't captivating.  So I did my part, right?

It was a somewhat rainy morning when Conrad went with Van to pick up the rental car.  I got the (heavy) bags down to street, and once we were loaded in, we were off northward.  Our destination:  Lezzeno.

I'll be honest:  the scenery was not amazing for the early part of the drive.  A lot of it was kind of flat, agricultural.  Important to Italy, not a tourist attraction.  That's fine.  But then we neared Lecco, and things got more interesting.  As we passed that town, an arm of Lake Como came into view.  Despite the grey weather, we stopped to admire and take photos.

Lake Como is shaped like an inverted Y.  Imagine the triangle that is formed by the two prongs.  We came up the western shore of the eastern prong (still with me?), rounded the bend, and came partway down the eastern shore of the western prong.  Got it?  Good.  Lezzeno was the community we were headed to, and Filario was the hotel. 

We made it there late afternoon and checked in.

The hotel property includes what look to be residences that either the hotel owns and lets out or that individuals own and the hotel manages and lets out.  I'm not sure which.  Our room was really a two-bedroom, one-and-a -half bathroom townhouse that was on the other side of the pool

from the main hotel building. 

That gave us lots of space, not to mention balcony and patio overlooking the lake.

We could sit there (and I did at least once) watching hotel guests and ferries

and other boats on the lake going by.  We overlooked beach cabanas

that we might have used given some good weather.  Ah well.  A mixed weather bag on the trip, but we enjoyed it all.

Once unpacked, we had no real plans.  Once again, we had a nice dinner booked, but for our first night, we simply went to the beach bar and sat out by the lake, enjoying what was the best pizza I had on the trip

and cocktails all around,

including a Hugo for me. 

Evening closed in,

we grabbed a bottle of wine and returned to the room to relax and read and eventually go to bed.