Trip to Halifax

Two weekends ago, I took a trip to Halifax to visit my BFF. I flew over on Friday morning, we got to have lunch together at her place, then went out to see some ocean views. We picked up her daughter at school, and once her husband was home from work, her and I left to have dinner together. We checked out a store first, which she bought some haskpa juice so I could try it. They have a berry called haskpa, you can tell it's a berry, but it's more intense then the other berries, I really liked it.

We then went to a vegan restaurant called enVie, we both had the same thing, a grill cheese with a poutine, and it was delicious! Since it's vegan, it's not your typical grill cheese and poutine, so it was different, but very good! For desert, I had the raw chocolate torte which was also amazing, and my friend had the chocolate peanut butter pie. We went back to her place to change, so we can go tour around, she brought me to a few places that lead to an ocean view. I love the sound of water crashing around, birds, and the smell of the ocean. It's so calming and beautiful. Saturday we went to downtown Halifax to go to an indoor market, and mostly everything in there is local and homemade. It was amazing and wish we had something like that in Ottawa. I actually did a search the other day and found out we do have an indoor market, but when it's nice they move it outside, so I'll check it out and write a post on it. We got thirsty so went to a place that makes drinks, and got a fruit and vegetable drink, homemade with fresh ingredients, it was delicious! We then went to another indoor market, which had the Alexander Keith's brewery, so I was sure to get a souvenir for my hubby. We shared a Pad Thai for our lunch then made our way to a hotel to meet others for a food tour. Never done that before but it was a lot of fun and got to try a lot of amazing food. Our tour guide was from Ottawa, and she told me I should try the food tour in Ottawa, so I looked it up, and will do that at some point, and will write about it. Never heard about food tours, but it is good to know and can't wait to see what new places I will learn about in Ottawa. To get the details of our tour, you can visit my friend's blog, she wrote out a lot of details for the tour, her blog is called Eat Real Being Real. We walked a different way back to the car after, and she took me through Public Gardens, it's so beautiful there!

We walked a lot that day, she has a fit bit, and it tracked that we walked about 16 km that day. We still took the time to cook up supper though which was pizza! We bought the dough at a local pizza place, and we added tomato sauce, bacon, asparagus, beet greens and goat cheese, it was delicious! For desert, we had a vegan cheese cake that we picked up downtown. Sunday her and I drove about an hour away from her place and along the way, stopped to see this amazing view...

We drove up to Cape split for a 16 km hike. It was the most amazing hike! Half way, there was an amazing view, but of course a picture isn't as good as actually being there, it took my breath away

We stopped to rest a while and had some lunch, which we made eggs sandwiches, along with a banana, and local homemade bars. We hiked back, and here's a view along our hike...

This hike took us 3 hours, but really didn't feel that long, it went by so fast. I love hiking so I hope to do more this year. After our hike we stopped for some gelato, and stopped at a few shops including a vineyard. I brought home a bottle of red wine for my hubby and I to try out. When we got back to her house we made one delicious supper. Had salmon, with bacon, asparagus risotto and a garden salad, which the salad dressing was one that she bought in the market, it was really good. We even had white wine with our supper, she picked it up at the vineyard we went to. It really was an amazing trip. I got to try so much amazing food, and see a lot of beautiful things. I don't see my friend as often, so that extra long weekend with her was great.

This trip gave me some new ideas on what to make for meals. I'm also going to try to explore Ottawa more to see what I'm missing out on. If you know of any great places around Ottawa, please let me know.