Canada 2019

 This morning we drove from Halifax to Sherbrook, about 200 kms.  The road was absolutely empty at times, once we were out of the city, so driving was very easy.  The main hazard was a longish section with such a bumpy surface that we had to go really slowly.  I guess this is the inevitable result of the severe winters here and, to be fair, we passed a long section where they are resurfacing and we had to wait 15 mins and then be lead through the workings by a truck. We chose to spend the night in Sherbrook as it has a large historic village comprising 30 buildings brought from all over Nova Scotia and rebuilt.  Unfortunately it's the very end of the season so not many were open but we spent a couple of hours wandering round and talking to the “re-enactors”  in several of the buildings.  It seems the actual village depends entirely on the historic village for its existence as it provides work for about 100 people. Off to supper (at 5 o'clock) as th...

We took a drive out from Halifax on another glorious day to St Margaret's Bay.  The leaves are turning and the small communities we passed through were looking their best: shiplap houses, white churches, lots of annuals still flowering and many displays of pumpkins for sale. Chester Peggy's Cove

Evidence of student influence on the city: Big march in city centre. Student humour On the boardwalk We're evidently temporary members of the Wrangler club....saw 8 today and were waved at!

Another warm, sunny day which we spent strolling round the city. First stop was the Maritime Museum which has a large permanent exhibition about the Titanic.  Halifax was the closest port to the sinking so most of the bodies were brought here as well as lots of floating debris.  In a list of 2nd class passengers I found a Percy Deacon.  I know an ancestor of mine was on the ship but could not remember his name........ We then slogged up hill to the Citadel and looked around various displays concerning the Canadian and Scots regiments stationed there over the years.  There is also a military museum. The noon gun firing My feet were giving out by the time we'd wandered round the formal Victorian public gardens so it was back for a rest before heading round the corner to a Thai restaurant (great sauces but horrible meat!  Even the fish cakes were rubbery!)

On the first afternoon we walked the 2 blocks from the hotel to the water front.  Halifax is, at heart, a fairly gritty city but with 2 universities - Dalhousie and St Mary's - adding thousands of students to the population it's pretty lively.  The city has built 4 kms of boardwalk, 2 waterside museums, a new farmers' market  and a cruise ship dock to revitalise the economy and it seems to be working: there are apartment  blocks going up everywhere

Westjet's very modern prop plane flew us quietly to Halifax, on time on day 3.  We had lovely views of the fall leaves as we came into land, flying low over large stretches of water.  Halifax international is a modern airport and, of course, there was nothing to stop us whizzing into a completely empty car rental area as we had no bags to wait for.  ( I forgot to how amazed we were by the speedy immigration process at Montreal.  All passengers go through the same process whether Canadian or not.  There are rows and rows of machines which read passports - even mine which often foxes the machines at Heathrow- so no queuing at all.) The laid back young guy at Thrifty made no attempt to give us the hard sell to upgrade or take out extra insurance and said we could have whatever we fancied of his stock.  We ended up with a Jeep Wrangler, complete with Sat Nav, for the price of an economy!   We drove the 30mins into downtown Halifax with minimal diff...

3 weeks away with just cabin luggage meant some inventive packing but we didn't want to be managing big cases on our road trip or on the train once in Nova Scotia.Leaving Dorset on a very wet day we had an uneventful trip from Eastleigh to Dublin where we stayed once again at the airport Premier Inn. Neither BA’s web site nor staff could check us in for the Heathrow-Montreal flight because they had “oversold the cabin.”  This meant we needed proof of our onward journey when we landed at Heathrow to avoid having to go land-side to get our boarding passes.  Luckily Bob had brought a print-out of our itinerary so we were allowed through the magic doors and finally got our boarding passes. Although the Airport Inn at Montreal airport is convenient, with a free shuttle and clean, comfy bed it is not to be recommended.  Pretty shabby and of flimsy construction it was the “breakfast” which really ended any chance of a 1 star rec on Trip Advisor.  It consisted of horrid ...