Report cards (147 pages of them) and preparing for parent conferences (two days of them, beginning tomorrow) have taken all my spare time recently.
Last weekend, however, we had a wonderful break. For the last several years, we've planned an October weekend in Niagara-on-the-Lake with good friends of ours. We order tickets for a performance (or two) at the Shaw Festival and reserve the second floor of our favorite bed and breakfast, the Bide-a-While. Our hosts, Pat and Ian, make our arrival feel like a homecoming. Pat's breakfasts are superb--not only in taste, but in presentation.

Pat's pineapple boat--the appetizer--followed by eggs, tomatoes and asparagus and accompanied by Pat's famous scones.
This year, they even made reservations for dinner for us. Friday night we ate at a tiny little restaurant called Rest, less than a mile from the B & B. Saturday night we ate at Treadwell's--listed in a Canadian survey as the 8th best restaurant of 1,000 visited--in Port Dalhousie. Both meals were superb.
We saw two shows. Friday night we saw High Society, an elaborately produced Cole Porter musical at the Shaw Festival, and Saturday we went to a little theater in Port Dalhousie to see Vanities--a dark comedy about the lives of three cheerleaders over the course of several decades.

Grapes on the vine at Kacaba Winery.
Saturday we went off in search of new wineries to try. We stopped at several, including our old favorite, Strewn (wonderful semi-dry Reisling). Our new favorite from this trip was Vineland. It's a beautiful place and we found a Cabernet Franc we liked a lot. They also had a great Reisling.
Good friends, good food, good wine. Couldn't ask for anything more except great weather, which unfortunately we didn't have. But it didn't dampen our good spirits!
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