Staycation

When Christopher initially picked his holidays this year, he didn't get any time off in the summer; however, a while later a week opened up and he grabbed it.  So, he had last week off, and with the weekends and the holiday Monday tied into it, we had 10 days off together! 

We thought about going away, and researched some trips, but in the end decided to have our first staycation.  Any time we'd ever had time off together before, we'd always gone away, so we thought it would be nice to do some touring around our own city.

We planned out some things that we wanted to do on our staycation, and then checked them off as we did them:

We didn't get to all of them, but plan on keeping the list up and checking the rest off before summer is over.

It was exciting to try things we had never done before, like playing virtual reality:

And visiting Stone Hall Castle, a Medieval style castle in our city:

 

 

The virtual reality was awesome, and also extremely scary.  The first game we both tried was one where you go up in an elevator, and then the elevator door opens and you are on the top of a skyscraper.  There is a plank going off the edge of the skyscraper that you can walk on (and likely fall off of), but we were both too scared to do it.  It's amazing how real it feels, and how even though we knew we were standing firmly on the floor, we just couldn't bring ourselves to walk forward.  Once I was flying and crashed into a mountain, and almost fell down in real life!  Haha, such a strange feeling!

The castle tour was really interesting, and we definitely recommend it.  We enjoyed learning about the history of the property, and it's fascinating what the owner has done with it.

During our time off we made a couple different trips to the farmers' market, and got coffees at our corner coffee shop:

We went for ice cream:

And visited the Queen City Exhibition:

The first treat I always want at the Ex is a corn dog!

 

Over the course of the afternoon/evening we shared the corn dog along with a slice of pizza:

A lamb gyro:

And some terrible Asian noodles with sweet and sour pork and ginger beef (they used spaghetti noodles!?!?):

In the evening we were front row for the Arkells!

They put on an excellent show, and we had a blast!

Some deep fried Oreos after the show (they weren't great):

On our staycation we tried a couple new mocktail recipes, and then invented a third concoction to enjoy with some cheeses from Takeaway Gourmet.

We visited the museum ...

And really liked the infrared camera:

We spent a few evenings, and one afternoon, on different patios around town.  One evening we shared tacos at The Lobby (chicken and fish); they were delicious!

A couple of days we didn't leave the yard at all.  We cooked out there, ate, ran through the sprinklers and felt like kids again, read books (five between the two of us), and had a fire.

We did a bit of cooking/baking, but definitely the least amount we've ever done in a stretch of time at home.

Breakfasts were eaten at home, but we went out for (or picked up) lunch and dinner quite a few times.  More on our staycation breakfasts and the restaurants we visited in the next couple posts!

After 10 days of staying up late, and sleeping in longer than usual, Christopher is back at work, and we're back to our regular sleep schedule.  I love getting away on a trip, but really enjoyed this time at home, especially since summers are so, so nice in Saskatchewan. 

Do you like staycations?  Do you like corn dogs?

Do you have anything you still hope to do before summer is over?

Have you ever tried virtual reality?