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.