On the 7th of July we left for the airport in the middle of the day to fly to Newark. I had this seat that insisted on going back by its self. I remember during take off if just kept falling back and the guy behind Alan reached out his arms to make sure his seat wouldn’t do it. Then, when I tried to listen to the music with the headphones, I got two radio stations (one in each ear). I ended up having two sets on my head because Alan’s seat picked up the same two stations, just in the opposite ears. We had what was supposed to be about a three-hour delay turn into a four hour and eventually arrived in Halifax, Nova Scotia around midnight. We had to take a half hour cab ride in a station wagon (which had to be sent for because the other vehicles couldn’t accommodate the four of us plus the luggage.
Since the actual tour didn’t start until Sunday night, we had the day to ourselves. Of course, it’s very rare that stores in other countries are actually open past 5 o’clock, let alone even open on Sunday, but we did find some. We ended up touring the harbor dock area and had some very interesting ice cream. I personally had “turtle tracks”, which was vanilla, ice cream, caramel with these little chocolate turtles. Meanwhile, the passer byers noticed that we were eating ice cream in this “summer cold weather”. Actually, the weather wasn’t too bad; it was kind of like a Florida winter. The only difference is that we would be out, say around noon and it would be chilly. The weather would dramatically become warmer, you’d set inside a building and when you came out, it would be cold again.
At our welcome dinner we ended up sitting with these two New Yorkers, the nicest people you could ever imagine that would come from NY, and this one lady from Germany. She ended up being absolutely nuts, but not nearly as nuts as the other German/Florida lady.
The next day we had our tour of Halifax. Our first stop was at the Citadel Hill where my mom made me take pictures with the guards because she thought they were adorable. When we went on top of the hill, they yelled at Alan for climbing on the grass. We made a quick stop in the Public Gardens and then had lunch. Then we drove through these hills to get to the Sherbrooke village. I myself felt dizzy, but my dad actually got sick. You cannot imagine how disgusting it can be, kind of gave me flashbacks to the kid we flew with in Egypt. The Sherbrooke Village was exactly that, a village. I think the buildings were original and they were decorated and dressed like how they would have been, with an actual blacksmith making hangers, a woodsman making chairs, etc.
On the 10th we basically just drove to our next stop. We stopped in this acre of grassland that was covered with “famous” scarecrows. The owner apparently sells them for people with farms and decided to make this huge circle of them for tourists like us to stop in. We also made a quick stop at a gas station, an “Irving”. Almost everything is stamped with the name. I guess it is kind of refreshing to live in America to see so many different competitive names, instead of just one huge company that owns every means of producing items. The ironic thing was that there were barely any McDonald’s. It appeared to me that for every McDonald’s we saw (which we never ate at, aren’t we proud?) about a dozen Subway’s in place of them. The only thing interesting about the McDonald’s would be that they had “McLobster”. Mot being a fan of lobster, I wouldn’t really care to know exactly what that is.
Anyways, on our driving adventure we traveled up the Cabot Trail. We were supposed to see wildlife. We stopped at several look out points in which we did see whales. It was quite a ways away, but we could make out the tails. The big animal we were supposed to see would have been the moose. There was one spot where the moose was supposed to be and we made our moose call (a metal juice container with a wet shoelace hanging from it), but no such luck. We had basically given up all hope when we saw this pack of people (ok, two vehicles) stopped on the side of the road and there was a moose. Of course, our load huge bus scared the thing away. I can’t really remember if I saw the entire creature, but I do remember the rear end and the little stub of a tail. We had more luck seeing deer elsewhere on our trip than moose.
Our hotel was in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park. There was a golf course near by, but that was about it. We had to hike up a huge hill to get to dinner, which we had to be dressed formally for. This hotel happened to be one of the three hotels in the province owned by the government and we were expected to be dressed for this event, never mind that it’s cold outside, or cold to me rather.
On the 11th we went to the Alexander Graham Bell Museum in Cape Breton. There was this really heavy fog in the morning when we were going around the many hills and swerves of the area. Our only other stop that day, besides lunch, was at the Louisbourg National Historic Park. We had a bus take us out to the area. Before we entered the fortress, we stopped in the fishing house and the gates to enter. This fortress was actually for the French, being that we all spoke English; they gave us this hard time for being British spies. Our guide also mentioned that if anyone wears red, they’d especially point you out. Sure enough, this South Carolina lady had a red suit outfit. In the end, it was all really funny, and being my very conservative tastes that I have, I must say that the guard was quite attractive from my point of view.
We only had two hours in the fortress and believe it or not, it really wasn’t enough time. It seemed our time really wasn’t laid out very well. We went to the actual fortress, watched them fire the guns and such. Visited the very low buildings and some of the other shops. There was a Chinese porcelain making building way in the back that we watched for a little bit and then had to leave.
The next day we made our first stop in Pictou at the visitor center, the birthplace of New Scotland. We went into the Hector museum, the first boatload of Scottish Highlanders that landed in 1773 in Nova Scotia. Of course, pressed for time we only really spent about twenty minutes in the museum and ship because we had to use the other forty-five minutes for lunch. In my opinion, all we basically did was “eat, sleep and pee”.
We went on the Confederate ferry across the Northumberland Strait to get to Prince Edward Island we where stayed for the next two nights in the capital city of Charlottetown. There we went shopping and had the ever famous “cows ice cream.” I guess it could be looked upon as maybe our Baskin Robbins ice cream, kind of like their ever famous “Tim Hortons” are like our Dunkin Donuts. The only difference I can see, again, is that there really is no competition and I suppose the people don’t mind. I don’t think I’d ever seen a Dunkin Donuts crowded like a Tim Hortons.
July 13th we were up at seven and out by eight-thirty. We and four other people went on a harbor cruise of Charlottetown. At twelve-thirty we had a guided tour of the city. In order to keep our attention (because I’m sure I would have taken a nap on the bus like I usually did), she had this thing called “crochet cows”. Every time we passed a group of cows, she’d state whether there was a “crocheted cow” or not. She’d give us this pointless clues and of course, everyone came up with answer that had to do with knitting. Common sense would say that would be too easy. The biggest hint would be when someone asked her to spell the word and she told us she was a terrible speller. Being the smart person I am, I was the only, or rather the first person to figure it out (because, after I told the answer, everyone knew it.) Basically, you had to listen to what she was saying. It was a “crow-shade-cow”, the cow was the color of a crow. How exciting.
Anyhow, our first stop on this guided tour was to a church, which is said to be in the top ten places to perform music because of the great acoustics. Then we stopped at a beach in the P.E.I. National Park. She told us to take our shoes off and go into the water; it wasn’t cold (I think the air temp was probably around 60 degrees). The sand was red and very very fine. It didn’t stick to your feet like ours does. Anyways, I was one of the few brave souls to go into the water. It was cold. It was beyond cold. No American in their right mind would go knee deep in water that cold, but I did because my mom wanted a shell. Let me tell you, there are no shells there. There are no waves, there is no sea grass, just rocks, dark blackish water and red sand. Oh, and red jellyfish. There was a sign that said to watch out for them (I don’t know how you could miss them, the things were probably larger than my hand.) It stated that if you were to get stung by them, just apply some wet sand and the sting would go away. I don’t know if I believe that, but I wasn’t about to try it either. The guide also insisted that if you got your feet wet, the sand would stick, but by the time you reached the dock, the sand would be gone. As skeptical as I am, I didn’t believe it, but it was almost true. The leftover sand was easily brushed away.
Then we went to “Anne of Green Gables” (by Lucy Maud Montgomery) house. I personally have never heard of the stories but they’re extremely popular in P.E.I. and in China. Apparently, it’s the dream of the women to get married in her house and ride around in a carriage like the story portrays. We also were able to plant potatoes (since P.E.I. is the number one grower of potatoes). Then we made a quick stop at a lobster dock. The guide brought out two lobsters, Lucy and Lester, for everyone to say hello to. For dinner, they brought us to this lobster place. Anti-seafood person that I am, I was totally disgusted. They had this “all you can eat mussels” thing going on and everyone ate them at my table but me, which meant that every time they took one out of the bucket, I got all the juices/water dripped in my area. My mom was the only one at our table that actually had the lobster. She said it was only her second time eating it (since lobster isn’t exactly kosher, neither were the mussels). Neil, one of the New Yorkers, came over and basically, ripped the thing in half for her. Flashbacks of marine science there. I guess the entire tour was shocked by how they serve lobsters there. I really don’t know how you’re supposed to have them served, but they give you the entire lobster and just cut down the middle. One lady had a pregnant lobster and the other had some green organs that she could not look past.
On the 14th, we drove over the eight-mile Confederate bridge to New Brunswick. We only stayed for about twenty minutes in an Irving gas station and then drove back to Nova Scotia. We went to the Grand-Pre National Park in Nova Scotia. We went into the memorial church museum for the Arcadians. Apparently, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem (“Evangeline”) that helped put the life of the Arcadians into perspective and there was a bust of him in memory for it. At our hotel, we had a group picture taken. I felt like I was at some campground. The buildings were very spread out, the insides made entirely of wood.
The following day we made a quick stop at a tidal energy place and then went farther down the street to take a picture of the “glass water”. Our first actual stop was at the Port Royal Habitation, which is supposed to be one of the oldest settlements other than St. Augustine. The difference between the two, other than St. Augustine being twice as large and Spanish, was that the French settlement wasn’t original. They created this fort from what they thought it would have been liked. Then we went to Fort Anne in Annapolis Royal that was about ten minutes away, opposite side of the water. They had these four tapestries telling the history of the area with over three million stitches. Apparently, people from all over the community came over to work on the project. There are certain figures that represent people and their descendants came over to sew them (like the head of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth made like five stitches on it).
Next came the ever awaited whale watch. We had to take a ferry to Long Island where we would meet our “Pirate cruise seabird and whale watch” boat. It appeared to be a wonderful day up until we got there. The fog just became very heavy and you couldn’t see more than fifty feet in front, if that, but we went out on it. All we saw were a bunch of seagulls, someone insisted one of them was a puffin (and we were all quite disappointed that it did not have an orange beak), oh, and a black bump, which I was told, was a seal. We made several stops in the water thinking we would see a whale and it wasn’t until right before we were heading back when we saw a Minke whale. We also saw two harbor porpoises off in the distance, but that was about the end of the excitement.
Our final day in Canada, we went to another National Park where all we did was watch a twelve minute film and leave. We had lunch in Lunenburg where we spent a very little amount of time in the Fisheries museum. The bottom floor had all sorts of fish, very exciting, esp. since several of them were “American eels” or “American cod”. They made a point of telling us that they ship most of their fish over to Japan who then sends them their fish because our fish have too much mercury in them. Not from swimming along the shores of Canada, but from swimming along the shores of America, which I don’t doubt. We only made it to the second floor for like five minutes where they had a bunch of ship models and this really interesting wooden fish that I’d say was about five or six feet long.
Our very last stop on the tour was to Peggy’s Cove, where the Swissair flight went down two years ago. We climbed the many rocks to get to the lighthouse, which was a post office. You’re supposed to send yourself a postcard to get the “interesting” postmark they put on them, which we did. A little ways down the road was a fishery memorial which was the stages of a fisherman craved in stone.
On the 17th, our plane didn’t leave until about a quarter to two in the afternoon. Mom bought lobsters in the airport, live ones, which stayed alive until we got home. Thankfully, she decided not to send them thru, instead to have them as a carry on because our luggage was lost on our way to Newark. When we arrived in Newark, we only had about an hour to go through customs and find our gate. We had to of course pick up our luggage, which was actually the first set out. The luggage actually had about forty minutes to get to the plane, but it took us about twenty five to walk across the airport to get to the gate in which we had about fifteen minutes left before they shut the door so unless the airport was extremely efficient, we had pretty much given up hope that they were going to make it. When we arrived at the baggage claim in Palm Beach, we pretty much assumed that they weren’t going to be there, and they weren’t. They ended up being delivered to the house bright and early the next morning.
[The trip / Extras]
