Nova Scotia

Travelling from P.E.I to Nova Scotia was, for the most part, nothing to write home about, so I won't include that in this post. Suffice it to say that it was persisting down.

It was rather miserable.

Given that we were to be visiting a National Park the next day, and planned to be going on several walking trails, we were rather nervous about the weather.

The next day, however, was more like this:

Miserably hot perhaps, but we can cope with that.

We decided to drive around what's called the 'Cabot Trail'. Being the newly minted francophones that we are, we assumed that the trail was pronounced like Caboe and not like Cabott. A nice lady at one of the tiny supermarkets disabused us of that notion. It's Cabot. It rhymes with "carrot". You pronounce the T, otherwise why would it be there?

There's a famous walk that people do while driving around this Cabot Trail, called the Skyline. It's about 9km in the blistering heat. (The writer exaggerates - it was warm! Very nice and warm!)

You do get a view like this though:

The trail runs around a National Park (which we seem to be habitually frequenting for some reason) which contains everything from bogs to beaches.

Bog.

Beach. (OK, it's a bit rocky.)

They also had some frogs.

It's a bit of a holiday spot, but since you'd only go there during the summer, everything closes down during the winter, and things get a little run down.

Here's the view from a cabin that we stayed in for a couple of nights:

After doing the Cabot trail, we drove back towards Halifax. Our stay happened to coincide with Canada Day.

Apparently, in Halifax at least, one of the traditions of Canada day is free cake. Also free pancakes for breakfast, if you happen to be up in time. I think this tradition would go down well in New Zealand, perhaps for Waitangi day.

We went downtown to see if we could get some of that sweet free cake action. Halifax has an old historical fort in the middle of it, and this is one of the locations that was giving out the cake. We lined up in one of the lines that looked like it had cake at the end.

I can only assume that these people are tourists from Scotland who are also lining up for cake.

Unfortunately, the free cake was nearly all gone by the time we got to the end of the line, and they were giving out the last pieces to any children in the line. We were obviously too tall, so just missed out! Perhaps next time. We tried for another location that was meant to have cake.

They had some dog trials, but no cake.

Not quite unperturbed, but perturbed enough, we carried on in an attempt to find the other free thing that you do in Halifax on Canada day. Yes, that's right, we went on the ferry.

Halifax is just across the harbour from Dartmouth, and there's a toll bridge that you can take, or if you're a pedestrian, the ferry will suffice. While across in Dartmouth, we encountered a delightful musical duo!

After visiting the downtown area, we went back to our AirBnB accommodation (nice place, with nice hosts).

Peggy's Cove is possibly the most interesting little village that we visited in Nova Scotia. We didn't really see anyone there, other than the people working at the tourist places, and the tourists themselves. Apparently the early settlers in the area were all expecting to be farmers, and then when they arrived, it was all rocky, with boulders everywhere, so they had to be fishermen instead. There's a lighthouse though:

That wraps it up for Canada!