Date Day

As it always tends to happen in the summer, most weekends are booked up with cottage activities, road trips or vacations well in advance. So when it happened that M & I didn’t have any concrete plans for this past Civic Holiday long weekend, I jumped on the chance and organized a whole Date Day for just the two of us. Since M has been on a work rotation for the past year and a half, weekends are usually spent catching up with friends, seeing our families or doing general busy work. The the time that we actually get to spend in just each other’s company is sometimes few and far between. I knew when planning this Date Day that I wanted it to be relaxing, but also as local as possible to avoid spending countless hours in the car.

To start off the day, we had a fairly standard breakfast of oatmeal, but made all the more fancy by serving it with a green smoothie! We enjoyed our breakfast on the balcony with the early morning sunshine promising a gorgeous day.

After cleaning up breakfast, we hit the road to our first adventure of the day – Great Falls in Waterdown. I often forget that Hamilton is known as the City of Waterfalls, boasting over 100 waterfalls in the city & surrounding area. Great Falls was cool in the fact that you could explore both the top and the bottom of the falls.

To get to the bottom of the falls, you can take a blazed trail through the forest that takes you down to the rocky creek below. We spent a bit of time exploring the area before heading out on our next item on the agenda.

A short drive away from Great Falls was Kerns Cliff Park. Having never been here before, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The park is located on the Niagara Escarpment and has several trails (for both walking and biking) weaving throughout the woods. We managed to find a little spot outside of the forest between to paths that was just big enough for us to lay out a blanket and have a picnic.

I threw together some bean patties (kidney beans, oats, frozen veggies, BBQ sauce, mustard & a few spices) and we had them on bread with more BBQ sauce & pesto for some very filling sandwiches. I also made up some of Richa’s Sour Cream & Onion Granola (recipe here). This was such a fun change from a traditional sweet granola. And it actually tasted like sour cream & onion too! It’s definitely a recipe I can see myself making again. To cap off our meal, I served Susanna’s Lemon & Chia bread recipe made into muffins (recipe here). These were also really delicious. I loved the fact that there was only 2 tablespoons of maple syrup in the entire recipe, yet they turned out plenty sweet for my tastes. The chia & flax components in the recipe made for a really light and airy dessert. With full bellies, we packed up the car and headed to downtown Burlington for a special treat.

Since M & I are what you might call frugal people, we don’t often splurge on treats to ourselves. But since this day was all about us, I decided it was time to change that and I went ahead and booked us a couples massage at Spa in the Village (located in Village Square downtown). The experience started out with a relaxing sit in the sauna followed by hors d’Oeuvres before heading into the massage room. It was quite a relaxing way to spend the afternoon.

To round off the day, I made us reservations at the Red Canoe Bistro for dinner. As it was the last day of the Taste of Burlington, they still had 2 full menus for us to browse. They even had a Vegetarian/Vegan Menu! I was overwhelmed with the amount of choices! Before our meals came, we were served homemade bread with a white bean & vegetable dip with oil & balsamic. Very delicious. For an appetizer, I ordered the Exotic Mushroom Salad and M had the Local Duck Carpaccio. My salad had really good flavours (from the mushrooms), but I found it to be a tad too oily for my tastes. For entrees, I got the Lentil Pilaf and M got the Short Rib. My dish was good, but I felt it might be something I could potentially make at home. Regardless of the meal, I would definitely go back to the Red Canoe Bistro to try some of the other meals off the Veg Menu.

All in all, it was a fantastic day. I loved that we were able to experience so many fun things, and they were all within the city. It really makes me appreciate where I live and I can’t wait to keep exploring!