Day 14: Halifax, 17°, 🌤️

Enough Canadiana!! 😂

I thought this would be a welcome place to begin..,

Where we actually started our day was up on the Halifax Citadel, the British fortress which formed the core of their defences and dominates the surrounding area.

When we arrived at the front ticket booth the first question we were asked was if we had come off a cruise ship.🙄 I believe my answer was, “not likely”. It just slipped out.😬

We were told that there were 12,000 cruisers crammed into the small foreshore area of Halifax yesterday. Apparently the main sites were crushed, but like a Chinese food dinner, if you waited an hour or so they all disappeared. This confirmed our decision to cross over on the ferry to Dormouth yesterday to walk. One thing I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post was that the Halifax transit system including the harbour ferries is free on Tuesday for seniors. Timing is everything!

There are actors in many parts of the fortress. Some of them even get to blow things up with a cannon! Cool!

The fortress has been massively renovated, but unlike Louisburg it didn’t need to be completely reconstructed.

They’ve done a super job of restoring the place and the museum displays are first rate. Certainly worth visiting if one is in Halifax. Even better if you can come here when there are not a massive number of people wandering the site. It was a pleasure walking through a relatively quiet historic place.

Now fortressed out, we decided to try to find the area of Halifax that we’d driven through on our way into town coming from Peggy’s Cove. We had a general idea where the area was located, and after descending from the citadel we walked in that direction.

First we found a very pleasant park in the centre of the city. The park where the roses up top are located.

And then there was a lovely display of dahlias, something that my daughter Caitlin reintroduced into my garden this year.

We walked on and found what we’d been looking for…heritage designated houses. However, these ones are actually about to be torn down to make way for two apartment buildings. Sad to see this happen, but I guess they need the additional housing close to the university.

We moved on deeper into this very livable neighbourhood and discovered some nice looking homes.

Much like parts of the upper Fairfield area in Victoria.

It even had a bit of the same feel as Bungalow Heaven in Pasadena, California, but of course with a completely different type of house.

I think that, depending on where you might be situated, Halifax could be a very liveable small city. That is if you don’t mind winter and the occasional hurricane passing through August to October!🤨 Property is much cheaper than on the West Coast, gasoline is just $1.34 and there are lots of good restaurants. The harmonized sales tax is 14% though, but not unreasonable given the small population and other offsetting factors above.

We continued on our walk and passed through a huge central cemetery. They sure do like their cemeteries here!!

Being a bit tired of the usual sorts of meals we went out to a good Mexican restaurant for dinner tonight.

The food was well prepared with good flavours. We each had soup and split a main. More than ample.

Some final thoughts;

This has been a lovely trip with great fall weather. I put my wet gear and cold weather stuff into my travel pack to ward off the evil weather spirits and it seems to have worked! I never needed any of it.

The scenery bracketed by some stunning displays of colour has been outstanding. I can’t take any credit for this one. We simply lucked out.

The food was generally good. If I was to come here again I think there would be a few less pub visits, at least at dinner time. We also enjoyed the offerings in some decent restaurants

Seeing Ernie and Judi on PEI started us nicely on our way. We are now anticipating their eventual arrival on the other coast!👋

Finding a piece of my family history on PEI was a real treat. Hey Dad, the potatoes were very good too!

Cape Breton with the Celtic Colours Festival was amazing and I think the lobster dinner in a small community was a highlight, as were the people we met.

We stayed in a wide range of accommodations, with a few places really good quality. Some were quite unique experiences, which we really enjoyed and others completely unmemorable. This would be fairly typical cross section of our usual travels elsewhere.

Did we find lots of Colonial, First Nation and Canadian history? Absolutely. Much more than I anticipated, but not so much that it overwhelmed the trip. Though I will say that, at least for now, I’ve had enough Canadiana. I’m again looking forward to other offshore travel experiences. That doesn’t mean I’m done with exploring parts of Canada. I still want to experience some areas in Quebec and Newfoundland, but not particularly in the near future. There should be time for those adventures at some point though. AT will see to it!😅

We have a 9:35 flight in the morning and with the magic of travelling your time zone westward we will arrive in Vancouver just before noon, and hopefully find ourselves home by 4 PM. Not too bad.

That’s about it from here. Thanks for coming along, and I hope you enjoyed the ride.

Cheers!🍷

Geoff