All posts filed under: Travel

Gluten free options abound along Surrey’s Spice Trail

Published by theporkgirl

When my friend Linda, aka Lindork, asked if I would like to join her for a hosted trip by Discover Surrey for a culinary adventure along The Spice Trail, I expected to be taking more photos of food for her than actually tasting much of it. As a Celiac, I was hopeful that maybe one of our daily restaurant stops would have a gluten-free option, but I never expected the abundance of choices presented to me during our three-day tour. Surrey’s Spice Trail is a new marketing initiative aimed at inspiring a tasting adventure through Greater Vancouver’s most culturally diverse restaurant scene. Their interactive map features profiles on a diverse range of ethnic restaurants in a variety of price points, from hole in the wall joints hidden strip malls to fine dining restaurants with chic decor. You can watch the Lindork Does Life YouTube video to see everywhere we went and everything we ate along the Surrey Spice Trail in Surrey,BC. (I was very excited to get the gluten free shout out.) Here are a …

A weekend on Salt Spring Island

Published by theporkgirl

I’m not sure if it was complete luck, some ingenuity, or the power of positive thought, but I managed to find accommodation on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, with just one day’s notice for the August long weekend. The entire island was booked – literally. I later found out a friend had a reservation we could have used and when they called to cancel the hotel said no worries, as they had 25 people on the wait list. After there was nothing available online I tried seven places to ask if they had any cancellations (we are still in a pandemic after all). After hearing nothing but no I got creative and tried to see if there were any rental options. I found a post on the local Salt Spring Exchange website for a furnished room available immediately. I inquired if a short-term weekend rental was an option if it hadn’t already been rented and voila; we found ourselves in a heritage house in a private room with an en-suite bathroom, just a 12-minute walk …

Memories of Mallorca – 10 things to do that don’t involve the beach

Published by theporkgirl

Exactly one year ago I was ripping around the winding roads of Mallorca in a rental car with my London-town friend Kalpna, who I had met just five months earlier on a G Adventures trip through Bhutan. I never got around to documenting our journey around the Spanish island, and as a travel junkie, the pre-pandemic freedom of international travel has me feeling nostalgic to relive the memories. We also had a trip booked to Morocco in April that was cancelled due to COVID – and I am longing for an adventure with my travel buddy. I’ve done my best during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep my feet from itching too much by exploring my home province of Alberta, but as time goes by, I am more and more grateful of the time I have spent traveling abroad and the people I have met around the world. Kalpna and I got along so well in Bhutan, but organised group travel is different. I wasn’t sure how we would travel together on our own, but my …

Devour the Rockies – Take Three

Published by theporkgirl

In February, I took in the third annual Devour the Rockies Food and Film Festival at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. Devour the Rockies is a satellite event of Devour, the largest film and food festival in the world held annually in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Devour the Rockies gives guests the opportunity to spend a weekend at the Fairmont JPL celebrating cinema, indulging in wine (as well as beer and spirits), and getting social alongside a stellar lineup of chefs. Attendance has grown from 125 at the inaugural event in 2018 to 200 people in 2020, but the weekend still feels like I’m attending a private and intimate event in the rockies. I love the itinerary, the opportunity to socialize with chefs in a laid back environment, and of course, a weekend at the stunning Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. SAVE THE DATE: DEVOUR THE ROCKIES FEB 26 – 28, 2021 The recipe to a successful event has remained the same since 2018; here are five reasons I love Devour The Rockies. 1. A cabin crawl …

Three Days in Mexico City

Published by theporkgirl

For my 40th birthday I wanted to celebrate by traveling to somewhere I had never been before. I had been itching to check out Mexico City, and even though friends told me three days was not enough time to explore the bustling city, we decided to go for it. Yes, the travel there was a bit long for a three day weekend, (1 hour 20 minute flight from Edmonton to Vancouver then a 5.5 hour flight direct to Mexico City), but when presented with the option of 72 hours in Mexico City, or no hours, I would do the same again. We had exactly three full days in Mexico City and I think we made the most of them. It was a fabulous way to mark my 40th birthday, so if three days is all you have to explore, I say go for it. How we got around: Public transit from the airport is an option; however, our plane landed after midnight and we were back on our way to the airport at 4 a.m. …

9 Reasons Bhutan is worth the price of admission

Published by theporkgirl

In 2019 I booked a trip to Bhutan last minute, on a whim, or as some might describe as an impulse purchase. To be perfectly honest, it was a response to a meltdown over a disappointing birthday. I entered my 30s by celebrating my 30th birthday in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. I realized a little too late that I wanted something memorable to mark 39 – my last year before the big 4-0. So, six weeks after my birthday, I found myself with a problem that many people would love to have. I learned that I had too many vacation days that I couldn’t carry forward and I had to come up with a plan to use them. And then I found a way to burn through some vacation… a discounted G Adventures 10-day Wonders of Bhutan trip leaving in less than a month. Bhutan is not exactly easy to visit, nor is it economical.  Known as the last Shangi-La, I didn’t see my first images of the small land-locked country in between India and China …

A Weekend Guide to St Louis, Missouri

Published by theporkgirl

For the past few years we have traveled south of the border to celebrate The Spanadian’s October 16th birthday by taking in a basketball game on the NBA’s season opening weekend. This year, the league started later, so he offered up the opportunity to check out a hockey game (for me) instead. Using a search from Edmonton on the weekend we wanted to travel, he found return flights to St Louis for $420 (Canadian). When asked if I wanted to go to St Louis I replied, “sure.” I didn’t know much about St Louis, but the prospect of watching the defending Stanley Cup Champions, the St Louis Blues, and checking out a new city sounded good to me. After a bit of research, we found more than enough things to keep us entertained. We had an absolutely amazing weekend filled with great food, fun activities, a dose of history, and a view from the top of the tallest man-made monument in the United States. From the time we left our Air BnB to start exploring …

Cooking in Gascony, France

Published by theporkgirl

Life moves pretty slow in Gascony, an area of southwest France where I spent six days last summer immersed in a culinary course. Just how slow life moved was reinforced the day I tried to get back to the Gascony Cookery School’s kitchen before our French instructor Bernard delivered our first course of foie gras for lunch. I had just sat down in the restaurant for lunch with a glass of rosé when I realized I had left a tart in the oven from our morning pastry class. I was hustling back the 150 meters between buildings when our neighbor, who seemed to never be wearing a shirt, but always drinking a bottle of wine, caught sight of me. “Ca va?” he asked, concerned. In my remedial French I responded that yes, I was alright. He brought his arms to his side and swung them back and forth rapidly, laughing as he mocked my urgent speed-walking. I lacked the language skills to say my tart may already be on fire, so I just smiled and …

A Weekend in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

Published by theporkgirl

We recently celebrated our fifth anniversary with an extended weekend in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. For $300 return from Edmonton each we booked round trip flights with Air North, Yukon’s Airline, which allows guests to take two suitcases and still gives out snacks, mini-meals, and drinks for free – it could be one of the best travel deals we score all year. We arrived late on a Thursday night, which gave us three full days to explore before catching a 6 a.m. direct flight back to Edmonton on the following Monday morning. While we easily could have spent more time in the Yukon (allowing us to walk in the footsteps of gold rush hopefuls along the Chillkoot Trail, canoeing up the Yukon River, or living up the Klondike experience in Dawson City), three days in the land of the midnight sun was enough for a taste of the Yukon. Here are some of the activities that kept us busy on our trip: IN AND AROUND WHITEHORSE A CULINARY ADVENTURE We fueled up for a full day …

A weekend in Los Angeles – 10 things to do without a car

Published by theporkgirl

When Westjet posted a seat sale a few weeks before The Spaniard’s birthday, I took advantage of a deal I saw on the direct flight from Edmonton and booked us a three-night trip to the city of angels. I knew I wanted to take him to an NBA game, but after that I wasn’t sure what we would get up to. Everyone I spoke with said we would have to rent a car, but we weren’t excited by the prospect of sitting in traffic, trying to find parking, or paying for parking (especially with the Canadian $ making our American trips more expensive). So – I took a look at where the LA metro and bus system could take us, and we decided to plan our trip around that. From the airport we took the free shuttle to the LAX metro stop  where we were able to take the metro conveniently for around the same time it would have been for an uber or the FlyBus in high traffic times. Google didn’t give us the …