Jay and I went to Prince Edward County last weekend to celebrate our first anniversary! I can't believe it's already been a year since our wedding. I must say that this weekend was much more relaxing than the same weekend last year.
It took about 2.5 hours to get us to the County Cider Company where we tried some local ciders and ice ciders. We had a lovely lunch on their patio overlooking the winery and Lake Ontario. I tried a delicious peach cider, but was dismayed to learn that they were all sold out of it, and it couldn't be purchased anywhere else. If any of you are ever in the area, please please please buy a case of it for me.
We drove to Huff Estates Winery and stayed at the inn
there. It was a really lovely place that opened only a few years ago, so
it's much newer than some local B&Bs, and had a lot of charm. Each suite has its own private patio, and ours looked out onto the grape fields.
We also booked a winery tour that took us to 5 different wineries for tours and tastings. This was a fabulous idea, since you can get pretty tipsy with all the tastings. At Sandbanks Winery, I think we tasted every single wine they produced, which is about 14 different wines! Wolf, our wine tour operator, picked us up in his limo and we toured around with 2 other couples for about 4 hours. It was a lot of fun.
Here are some of the wines we bought:
As part of our inn package, we were driven to and from the Merill Inn in Picton for dinner. It was
so delicious. I had a goat cheese and beet salad, sea scallops with mushroom risotto, and a blueberry and peach millefoille. Jay had a crab cake, beef tenderloin, and Baked Alaska for dessert. I'd highly recommend this restaurant if you're ever in the Picton area!
The next day we drove to Sandbanks Provincial Park. Their claim to fame is Dunes Beach, where the sand dunes get up to about 60 feet high. It was pretty cool! The sand was soft and fine, and the dunes were really neat to see. We also did a nature trail hike, but this wasn't too impressive since we're so used to portaging through wooded areas anyway. I almost stepped on a snake, which made me scream so I guess it was a little thrilling after all...
Picton has a famous local hot dog restaurant called Buddha Dog, which makes their own beef hot dogs and has some fancy gourmet accompaniments. I think these ones had apple chutney, carmelized onion baco noir sauce (I could have eaten spoonfuls of this), and smoked chili ketchup.
On our way home, we stopped by an ice cream shop in Bloomfield. We shared an apple pie ice cream, and it was sooooo good. It had chunks of apple filling, crust and all in one delicious cone! And we stopped by the Big Apple on our way home so Jay could get a photo with his one true love (hint: it's not me, haha).
My mom kept the top layer of our wedding cake in her freezer, and now was the time to bust it out! The fondant looked really sad, but the cake itself was still surprisingly tasty. All in all, it was a perfect weekend :)
- Michelle
