CUT TO - INT - An unusually crowded floating lodge.

It is roughly a week after STEVE has visited Prince George. We meet our hero mid-conversation with a biology/forestry professor who is from the area.

PROF
You spent that long in Prince George?

STEVE
Well, I was doing some work remotely, and a room in an Airbnb was super cheap.

PROF
Oh yeah, that makes sense. They can’t charge you that much for a stay in Prince George.
So what did you think of it?

STEVE
Oh, well I really liked it, actually. I was struggling to see some of the charm at first, but then…

WAVY LINES TRANSITION into third-person narration…

---

What’s a town without food?

Prince George has a relatively small selection of restaurants, but fortunately, a few of them deliver quite heavily in terms of quality.

Sim’s Lunchbox is a Korean Restaurant that’s open for lunch, and it has some phenomenal lunch specials, along with food that would fit in with NYC K-Town’s Food Gallery 32, and down-to-earth ambience. It is a lovely, lovely small business, and a great place to grab lunch. I got takeout from here twice.

Betulla Burning churns out their own take on Neapolitan-style pizza, with a rad selection of toppings, and delicious fluffy crust. I had the sopresetta & fig pizza, and it was everything I could have hoped for.

But, in terms of my own personal experience, Nancy O’s is the place that I vibed with the most, the place that made me wish that I was staying in P.G. longer, and the place that made me realize how much more I could have to do and see. (And the reason why I bothered writing this out as a separate blog post.)

Google-schmoogle classifies them as a “gastropub.” Certainly, they excel at the pub part, boasting a selection of top-rated belgian beers in bottle, and rotating taps of B.C. local brews. On special, they had two cherry sours, both of which were highly recommended to me by the bartender.

So, I sampled them both. The first, the Cherry Blossom Sour from Moody Ales of Port Moody, B.C. was every bit as floral-forward as its name suggested, with a delicate light body, and an authentic cherry taste. It was lovely.

The Cherry Sour from Red Collar Brewing of Kamloops, B.C. was even better. It had floral notes, and an excellent balance of sweetness and tartness, and it had a really, really full-bodied cherry flavor. It was almost as if you could feel the full fleshiness of biting into a full juicy cherry. Amazingly, the drink itself was still pretty light bodied, and it was all together excellent.

The meal I had at Nancy-O’s was excellent as well. I had opted for the Korean Fried Chicken Dinner, and literally everything on the plate was somehow delectable in its own way, even the pile of rice that was so lovingly flavored with coconut. The bartender kicked ass, and I was disappointed not to be returning the following Saturday for “Vinyl Night,” when the purveyor of a local record shop would bring over several crates of records and spin some tunes.

Hell, I was disappointed I didn’t check out the record store, which apparently was home to quite a few gems.

If I had another day in Prince George, I would make my way to Eskers Provincial Park, and check out the lakes and wavy glacial deposits of gravel that live there. I would check out the book store, the record store, and the obnoxious P.G. mascot man standing near the intersection of roadways. And, I would return to Nancy O’s for “Vinyl Night” and throw down cherry sours with reckless abandon.

Alas, it was not to be.

STEVE
I’d love to, but unfortunately, I’m on my way to Prince Rupert.

BARTENDER
Oh, really? That’s cool. I’ve never been, but I hear it rains a lot there.

STEVE
That’s okay. I’m used to rain.

Curtains fall, the play is over.