Family Time

Mum, Dad and Nan had a week in Toronto and Niagara and then a week in Quebec. The middle weekend we all went to Tremblant. We had a fabulous three bedroom apartment overlooking the cable cars. I was disappointed that all the activities were closed as were the cablecars. We still had a good weekend walking round the village and watching the beavers on the lake.

The final weekend they were with us, we showed them more of Ottawa. We walked around the Byward market, along the Rideau canal and showed them some of the places we go to a lot, Second Cup and Loblaws! They were amazed by the size of the supermarket.

We dropped mum, dad and nan off at the airport. It was very sad to see them leave. So sad that we bought a bottle of icewine to commiserate ourselves.

Restaurant Review - Vittorio Trattoria

This restaurant was like a tardis as on entering the restaurant it grows and grows. If the subdued lighting had been any lower we would have difficulty seeing the waiters! A tip learnt from Nanny – to test whether your vegetables have been cooked properly, you must first call the waiter over and try to chop the vegetables with a knife. If your knife bounces back then they are not done properly. Another thing to remember is that the numbers on the right hand side of the menu is not like a Chinese menu but the price. The meals and the service were good and we would recommend it.

Choo-Choo

We were extremely busy when we got back on Wednesday night and again on Thursday getting things ready for our next visitors! Ian’s parents and Nan arrived on Friday morning. Sarah entertained them in the afternoon by taking them on a little tour of the Glebe. Yesterday we showed them the delights of Ottawa. We did the Parliament tour with them and walked around the Byward market. We then too them for dinner at an Italian restaurant in the Byward. The restaurant review will follow. Today, Sarah and I had a lie-in and in the afternoon we went on the Hull-Wakefield train through the picturesque Gatineau Hills. We had a 90 minute stop in Wakefield and browsed through the gift shops and had a delicious hot chocolate, served with melon and pineapple skewers, in Mimi café.

Surly Security

Had an enjoyable morning walking along the waterfront and around the various gift and craft shops in Lunenburg. Avid readers will remember our disappointment at not being able to see the boat, Bluenose II when we were in Halifax. This was because it was the off season and Bluenose II is harboured in Lunenburg for refitting over the Winter. Luckily for us the refitting is done out in the open so we got to see the boat that was unbeaten in 20 years worth of races from 1920 and is such a national icon that it appears on the 10cent coin.

On the drive back to Halifax we stopped off at Peggy’s Cove. The guide book said the population of Peggy’s Cove was 60 people, but they can’t like each other because we counted 70 houses! The reason to visit Peggy’s Cove is its lighthouse, which is one of the most photographed in Canada. It was very picturesque and looked very lonely standing guard on the rocks.

Back in Halifax we ate at Perks again and then dropped the car off at the airport. For a small airport they have very stringent security. My bag was searched and the officer asked me to “confirm the contents” of my open bottle of coke. I told her it was diet coke and she just looked at me. She said I had to drink some to prove it was harmless. When Sarah pointed out that it wasn’t harmless to my teeth she got a very unamused stare in reply.

Bountiful Day

The breakfast at St. Mary’s lodge was sliced meats, bread and fruit. Very healthy and very tasty. It was a couple of hours scenic coastal drive from Sherbrooke to Halifax and as the rain had lessen we enjoyed it all the more. Back in Halifax we had a really cheap, good quality lunch at Perks café, near the waterfront. Highly recommend their low fat brownies. Halifax looked even better today as there were blue parts of sky and once we even saw the sun. We could do all the things we had intended to do on our first day. We started with St. Peter’s, the Church which has a piece of iron window frame embedded in it from the 1917 explosion. It looked quite peculiar sticking out of the wall above the entrance door.

Did some window shopping in an interesting women’s clothes shop called Peep Show. I was disappointed. I don’t want to give the impression that Halifax is a depressing place because it’s not, but the next place we drove to was a cemetery. Not content with checking the passenger lists from Titanic, we went to see the gravesite. Around half the graves were unnamed and it was very sad that people whose families were not well off only had a very basic headstone giving the name and date.

After the gravesite we spent an hour or so in Pier 21, a museum about immigration into Canada. Halifax and pier 21 in particular was the port of call for several million immigrants in the 20th century. There were lots of audio and video recordings of immigrants and customs officials reliving their experiences, from World War II refugee children, to war brides and Eastern Europeans in the 50s. The museum has a brilliant 3D holographic film presentation of the history of pier 21, worth the entrance fee itself. Sarah cried when one British lady (a war bride) recalled saying goodbye to her father at Waterloo and how she never saw him again.

We then braved Halifax rush-hour, it was quite bad, and drove to the nearby seaside town of Lunenburg. It took us about an hour and another half hour to find check-in for our hotel as it was in the pub beneath the hotel itself. The rooms didn’t have numbers, but instead had nautical names. We were staying at the Brigatine Inn and were in Bounty of mutiny fame (I told Sarah she better remember who is boss). In each room they have a description of the significance of the room name to Lunenburg. It turns out that the boat used in the film, Mutiny on the Bounty was built in Lunenburg.

Model Tourists

We had an enjoyable homecooked breakfast at the B&B. We met a couple that were on their honeymoon from Arizona and their friends from Lunenberg. After breakfast we checked out and drove for nearly an hour to the historic fort at Louisbourg. A reconstruction of 1/5 of the original 18th century fortified village has been built as a living museum of how life was in Nova Scotia then. The original fort was the French foothold in Canada. It was captured by the British in 1745. The British felt bad for this and gave Louisbourg back to the French after only three years and despite the protests of the American colonists. Britain captured Louisbourg again five years later, just to prove they still could. The walk around the fort was interesting, primarily because various actors were in each building and behaved as they would have done in the 1744, a year before the first British attack. Sarah and I made comments to the actors about how horrible it must be to live in a French town and wouldn’t they like the British to liberate them? Our smugness was soon lost when they threatened to put us in the gaol!

After looking round the fort we drove to Sydney, the largest town on Cape Breton for lunch. It was thanksgiving so we knew we might be limited for choice. We found the centre of Sydney, but only two places were open. We had a good thanksgiving meal in Subway (Sarah did have a turkey sandwich at least)! We took a different route out of Sydney and found a large retail park that had lots of restaurants and shops that were open. D’oh!

We drove on, in the rain again, to Sherbrooke on the South coast. The scenery is wonderful all over Nova Scotia from what we’ve seen and with only a million people in the whole province it is left to nature in a lot of places, which we really like. Sherbrooke is one of many little villages dotted along the coast. We’d picked to stay there because it was about half way from Cape Breton back to Halifax. Still it was a nice place and to attract the tourists they have a replica 19th century village. I guess the 18th century niche market had already been tapped. It turned out that the best restaurant, and only one open on thanksgiving evening, was in the replica village. The restaurant allowed you to spilt your orders or have half a portion which we thought was a good idea. We walked quickly back to the St. Mary’s Lodge B&B where we were staying to catch Arrested Development on TV, but were disappointed to find it wasn’t on.

Oddities and Orignal on the Trail

Today we got up early to drive the Cabot Trail, one of the most picturesque drives in North America. To get to the Trail we had to drive about an hour to Cheticamp. On the way there we saw an eerie sight. On the lawn next to a remote grocery shop were nearly a hundred scarecrows all dressed up, most with Halloween masks. Nixon and Reagan were having a tea party with an alien, it was very odd. We had an enjoyable breakfast in the Hometown Kitchen in Cheticamp and were pleased to see the local bobbies enjoying their fry up too. We stopped off at Flora’s, a gift shop, to look for a memento of our trip and saw that the hooked rugs that the region is famous for were on sale for $60 upwards (the cheapest pieces were only 6x4!). We decided against getting one of those and purchased instead a fridge magnet to add to our growing, useless collection. The rain from yesterday had followed us and as we headed into the Cape Breton Highlands National Park and onto the Cabot Trail we were relieved to see that the Fire Risk chart indicated ‘Low’. We had only been on the Cabot Trail for 5 minutes when I noticed a couple of cars parked up by the side of the road ahead of us. We slowed to see what they were looking at and we saw a family of 3 mooses!! They were incredibly tame and we got out of our huge jeep and stood by the roadside watching them for fifteen minutes or so. It was a great start. Back on the trail we stopped and did some walks within the park – around a bog and Warren Lake but the rain deterred us from doing more. We stayed in North Sydney that night, a small town that seemed quite deserted. We stayed at the Heritage Home B&B and although we ended up with a self-contained flat, we still went out for Chinese! Even though the restaurant only gave you greaseproof paper napkins, it was still the best, sorry only, Chinese in town. Back at the B&B we enjoyed watching Desperate Housewives curled up on the sofa.

Not Very Meritimes

There are few things that can really put a downer on a holiday: fog obscuring the view, heavy rain so you want to do indoors activities, indoor activities being shut when you’ve purposely woken early and scaffolding covering the historic site that you can just see through the rain and fog. The day didn’t start well. We began the morning with a walk around the Historic Properties but a lot of the shops were closed. We noticed that Halifax has lots of brightly painted lobsters around town. It’s a nice novelty and we found we were on the look out for more lobsters.

The miserable weather continued and when we found that there was scaffolding on the town clock too we decided to cheer ourselves up and went to the Atlantic Museum to see exhibits on the Halifax Explosion (6 Dec 1917) and the sinking of the Titantic (12 April 1912). The Halifax explosion was caused by a Norwegian ship running into a French munitions ship that was packed full of explosives and nasty acids to make more explosives. The ships collided in Halifax harbour and when the sparks caused by the collision started a fire on the French ship, the crew jumped over board as soon as they could and swam for the distant shore as the pilotless ship headed for downtown Halifax. The Haligonians didn’t know what the big boat coming towards them was carrying and lots of them ran to the port side to get a better look at the commotion. The resulting explosion when the boat did go up was the largest man-made explosion in history until that day (prior to the development of the atomic bomb). The sound was heard hundreds of miles away in New Brunswick and destroyed most of Halifax. A 500lb piece of the hull of the French ship was found 5km from the explosion site and the anchor was found 3km in the other direction. The call for help went out straight away and lots of cities sent medical aid. Boston in particular sent a lot of help and by way of thanks Halifax continues to send the city of Boston a large Christmas tree every year.

The Titanic exhibit was just as informative and sad. There were some artefacts from the ship, like deckchairs and some of the passengers’ jewellery. It was interesting to look through the passenger and crew lists. The lists had been added to, to show survivors. Something like 90% of the women and children survived and only 10% of the men. So much for everyman for himself. Some people could learn from this example.

There was a break in the clouds so we headed up to the citadel for the firing of the noon day gun (it wasn’t noonday and it wasn’t a gun). Right on queue, it rained heavily from 11.58 – 12.02, making it difficult to take pictures and the canon misfired at the first attempt. Wet and windswept we decided we might as well take the tour of the Citadel. It was built in 1856 and is the forth citadel on this site built by the English, partly to counter the French fort at Louisbourg up the coast and party to protect against an invasion by the yanks. Just like the previous three forts, this fort has never been attacked. Maybe the rain put invaders off. The fort had masts and flag poles which were used for communication purposes. In the 19th century these and masts at similar forts made it possible to send messages from Halifax to Fredericton, New Brunswick in 24 hours. They should have tried harnessing the power as lightening, I hear that’s very quick (sorry couldn’t think of a better adjective).

We had lunch at Salty’s back in the historic properties port area. We’d picked this restaurant as they had sweet potato chips on the menu. They were delicious! Afterwards we looked round the Cows shop. They sell ice-cream and cow-pun merchandise throughout the Maritimes. Sarah liked the little Elmoo T-shirt but they didn’t have her size. We picked up the hire car and were given a free upgrade. My stinginess got the better of me here; I heard the word free and immediately took it, but I didn’t stop to think that the massive jeep we were given would cost a fortune in petrol. It was fun to drive, for about five minutes and then I found it really sluggish to drive and because the seat couldn’t be lowered I got really bad neck and back-ache. Cars like this are no good for everyday driving and really should be restricted to the school run. I’ve decided that I will never buy a North American car and if I have the choice I won’t have one for a hire car either. Generalising like this makes my life easier as I don’t have to remember which types of American cars are rubbish.

We had a rainy but scenic 3.5 hour drive to Whycocomagh on Cape Breton Island. It was 7pm by the time we found our hotel and we had tickets to a Celtic Colours concert at 7.30pm so we quickly dropped off our bags and rushed to the venue. We expected a small gathering as the venue was a school hall but there was a huge crowd in the school gym. People were having to stand round the walls and in the doorways. I managed to beat an elderly couple to two seats (everyman for himself, remember) so at least we could comfortably tap our feet to the music. Three bands played. We particularly liked the first artist, David Francey and bought his CD in the interval and got it signed. The second band were ok, but I’m a bit of a traditionalist with my Celtic music and I didn’t like their efforts to incorporate an electronic keyboard, though they did do some Riverdancing, so they win points for that. The final band were from Quebec and were really entertaining. They got the audience involved and one band member came down off the stage and started a line dance, which went through and around the first two rows of seating. One guy played a really odd looking instrument. We had a great time, well where else can you hear the Imperial March from Star Wars played on a Hurdie Gurdie (look it up)? Canada has a small town feel to it sometimes and this was reinforced by the Queen’s representative in Nova Scotia being at the concert. Not only was she there but danced on stage and was joined by the 70 year old compere. The whole audience laughed when he was doing his jig on stage and almost lost his kilt. Twice! This was during the finale when all 3 bands played together on stage. The concert ended at around 10pm but we were told about the nightly jamming session at St Anne’s Gaelic College, a 30 minute drive away, so we headed there. It involves all the performers from all the concerts around Cape Breton that night and lasts until the wee hours. It wasn’t quite the unrehearsed mix of acts that we expected but we did share a table with a group from Newcastle. We’ve had 8 months of Canadians wishing us a nice day, so it was nice to hear some cutting British comments. I overheard one guy comment that a performer on stage “looks like he’s having a stroke”.

Hello Halifax

We got the 6.10pm flight from Ottawa to Halifax. We left a cloudy, rainy day in Ottawa. It was a cloudy, rainy night when we arrived in Halifax! To keep costs down we stayed at the Youth Hostel, we had a private room with ensuite so we were happy. We’d been recommended the 5 Fishermen restaurant but they had stopped serving food, so we walked out to the harbour to look for a restaurant that was open. We had pizza at East Side Mario’s, where the waiter told us to avoid the harbour at this time of night!

Kindess of Strangers and Strangeness of Squash

We had a nice experience this week when we decided to treat ourselves to coffee-shop hot chocolate only to have our drinks paid for us by another couple. They had given the waitress some money and told her it was to pay for drinks for the next people to order, which was us. We thought we must be on Candid Camera, but the couple were just being nice and said to us that we should do something nice for a stranger in turn. We weren’t so imaginative though in giving the waitress $3 and a homeless person $5. In keeping with the kindness theme of the week, Sarah bought doughnuts for her students and staff (and had a couple herself!). I didn’t do anything else nice.

This weekend was the 10th annual pumpkin weigh-off. Twenty or so sites throughout North America compete to see who can produce the heaviest, genetically modified, tasteless, warped, freaky pumpkins. The World Record (I suspect this is ANOTHER example of a “World” record that only North America takes part in) pumpkin weighed 1449 lbs. In case you can’t estimate this weight, imagine three 483 lbs little whales mashed together.

The pumpkins are a triumph of man’s command of nature as they can gain 30lbs in a day and only take 70 days to grow to maximum girth. They actual weigh-off takes a couple of hours as each pumpkin must be lifted onto the scales by means of two fork-lift trucks. We only stayed to see a couple of weighings. There were other examples of massive fruit and vegetables, see photos. I’ve no idea what the winning grower gets, but apparently the pumpkins are given a fittingly bizarre end: next weekend they are thrown into a river, the tops are sliced off and the pulp removed so that Martha Stewart can sail away (see Globe and Mail or search for "Martha Stewart Pumpkin Windsor").

We left the pumpkins to battle it out and headed to Kingston for Sarah’s Aunt’s birthday. We enjoyed the evening with family and had a lovely BBQ and birthday cake.

We left after dark and on the way home we were stopped at a police check point. This reminded us of the time we were driving to Sarah's parents and were pulled over by the police and Sarah had a case of Smirnoff Ice at her feet. The Canadian police were also looking for drunk drivers, so it was lucky that I hadn't had a drop. It was also lucky that the cops were not very observant because after half an hour of driving after the check point I realised that I didn't have my car lights on!