It was a new experience for my wife and I over the last two weeks of August. While we always take vacation during this time of the year (both of our birthdays fall at the end of August, some 5 days apart), it was a bit of a departure for us this time. Firstly, my wife, no longer working in the school system, was relegated to only having a few weeks of vacation to use for the year rather than having the summer off. Secondly, we opted to not take any trips this year for our vacation. This meant that we had two weeks of rest, relaxation and quiet.

And boy did I need it.

I hadn’t fully realized how tired I was until I’d had my two weeks of vacation. The benefit of not traveling during our time off was that we weren’t just running around day after day as we often do. Rather, the days seem to slowly amble by. It was extremely pleasant if I am being honest. Though I was only off for two weeks, I felt as though I’d been away from the office for a month. I finished off the two weeks rejuvenated and reinvigorated.

That’s not to say my two weeks was boring. Far from it! For the first week, we rented a cottage in one of our favourite locations – Cap Lumière. To be fair, the “cottage” we rented is actually the year-round home of the owner of the site. He rents out his home over the summer along with a few other cottages. A week in a beautiful home, by the water, with nothing to do around other than sit on the patio, go across the street to the beach, read, watch TV, meditate and play Scrabble. Okay, that’s still a lot of things to do, but when your biggest decision is “do I walk across the street to the beach, or sit outside on the patio?” then you know you’ve got it good.

The one exception in the week was for my birthday. We spent a quiet morning around the cottage, but then headed up to Miramichi after lunch to do a bit of shopping at Winners (we came up bust here… no purchases!), and then had an early supper at 1809. The meal was delicious, and the entertainment (from the older Yankee ladies sitting at the table next to us as they attempted to eat lobster) was quite humourous.

We watched a bit of Netflix, I read a couple of books, and we truly relaxed and appreciated every single second that we were at the cottage. The best part about the end of our week at Cap Lumière was that we still had an entire week to go once we got home! More than a week as our vacation ended on the Labour Day long weekend, so we had a bonus day. That week consisted, primarily, of us staying at home.

And you, my dear readers – how did you spend your vacation time this summer? Did you take some time to rest and relax? Or did you take off on some wild getaway and just went go-go-go? So long as you enjoyed yourself, there is no correct answer! I’ll leave you with a few images of some of the other food we enjoyed over the two weeks.