Off To The Canadian Maritimes!

Specifically PEI & Nova Scotia

With the funeral of my mother lovingly and respectfully behind us and my father settling in, he agreed that it would be OK for us to take a short two week trip to the Maritimes. We had originally planned to be away for over a month, including two grandchildren birthday celebrations bookending our travels, but of course changing circumstances means adjustments. Such is life.

This resulted in a somewhat hurried re-jigging of our plans, but things have worked out quite nicely with even better flights booked than we originally had scheduled. We now have direct flights to/from Halifax, a significant upgrade without a flight change in Ottawa.

My Air Canada linked credit card includes an annual companion pass, which allows AM to fly return within Canada for a mere $99! This credit card provides a companion pass once a year to anywhere in the world that Air Canada flies, with graduating companion fares related to the global destination. A nice perk if you ask me. They should be paying me to say this! 😆

Our rescheduled flights actually turned out to be a bit cheaper than the original flights, but they could not provide a refund for the difference because of the types of tickets. However, they kindly upgraded our seats to something called comfort seats, which apparently allows us to check two bags and provides a full refund if we are unable to go. This is great if you have luggage to check, but we seldom check luggage.😆 Perhaps sometime in the future we might need to take a checked bag with us, and we will keep this feature in mind.

We have booked accommodation for part of the trip, but our plan is to leave ourselves as free as possible, given that we are travelling in the fall to an area with often variable weather. This year being such an active hurricane season, it’s conceivable that Nova Scotia could be sideswiped by one of these storms. It’s historically occurred, and most recently just a few years ago. We are obviously hoping that this will not happen this year, but it’s good to be aware.

AM has wanted to visit the Maritimes for many years, and it will be nice for her to finally have that experience. I have some significant family history on PEI and Newfoundland from the 1700s, so I’m looking forward to checking that out. My cousin Karen has shared some of the information that she gathered while working on our family tree with my father. So I’m looking forward to that part of the trip.

We have rented a car which will provide us with maximum freedom. Our first destination will be Charlottetown, PEI where I will be able to finally have a face-to-face visit with my good friend Ernie, who was born and raised there on the family farm. After PEI, the majority of our travel will be on Cape Breton Island with a short excursion southward into parts of Central Nova Scotia. There are presently a couple of large wildfires burning in the Annapolis Valley region, so we will be keeping an eye on those. Such a bad fire season in Canada this year.

This is also the best time of year to view the amazing nature fall colours. I’m looking forward to some exciting photography, and hopefully our amended travel times correlate well with the leaf changing season.🤞

We arrive in Halifax on Wednesday evening and after a night by the airport we will pick up our car and drive to PEI. Please feel free to come along!

Geoff🍁🍂