Thursday, July 15, 2010- Nova Scotia

We left our cottage after Julie packed us up this morning. We won’t miss the cottage itself so much, but we had a great time at Prince Edward Island. We crossed the island in order to get to the ferry to Nova Scotia. We arrived just moments too late for the ferry, and got to watch it disappear into the fog bank, so we had to wait for about an hour and a half for the next one. It gave us a chance to post to the blog and check e-mails quickly. Julie was a bit nervous about driving onto the ferry, but she got much worse when she realized we were going to be the first on AND that we’d have to drive down to the lower deck. In the end, it wasn’t so bad, though.

We ate lunch onboard the ferry and had Cows ice-cream for dessert. The delay meant that when we did get on the ferry, it was much clearer out, and at one point we could see P.E.I. behind us and the shores of Nova Scotia in front of us, even though the Northumberland Strait is 14 miles across at that point. Anna liked spotting jellyfish in the water as they floated by us. The whole trip took a little more than an hour.

We got to Nova Scotia at about 12:30. Julie had spotted an interesting ad in the Nova Scotia visitors guide that we got on-board the ship, and so we found our way to the nearby town of Pictou. Nova Scotia’s name means “New Scotland,” and the town of Pictou is supposed to be the original Scottish settlement on Nova Scotia. (The woman in the tartan shop said the locals pronounce the name of the town as “Pick-tow.”) In Pictou, there is a replica of the Hector, the ship that brought those original Scottish settlers here in 1773. The ship looks great, but apparently the company that runs it had financial trouble, and the visitors centre for it was closed.

We stopped at the provincial visitors’ centre nearby to stock up with information and drove across the peninsula to Halifax. While driving across the peninsula we passed a sign that said we were exactly half way between the North Pole and the Equator, putting us at the latitude of exactly 45 degrees North.

We got to our hotel in Dartmouth at about 3:00 and settled in. It was still early enough to do something, so we drove across Halifax Harbour to Halifax proper. We went down the piers where there is lots to see for tourists ready to stroll. After getting our bearings, we signed up for the Harbour Hoppers tour. Like the Duck tours in other cities, Habour Hoppers uses a repainted military amphibious vehicle to first drive you around the city and then take you out into the water. We saw many of the city sites, from the Citadel at the highest point in the city to the navy yards. We heard how when Winston Churchill visited Halifax in 1943, he said, "Now, sir, we know your city is something more than a shed on a wharf". We can see that too. Emma, however, didn’t believe that the bus was going to go into the water. She fell asleep before we reached the water and missed that whole part. When she woke up at the end of the tour, she didn’t seem to believe that we had been out in it.

We continued to look at the interesting ships and shops in the wharf area. We saw where the Bluenose II is usually docked, but it is being refurbished this summer. The Bluenose is the ship on the back of the Canadian dime, and is featured in the song by Stan Rogers. Scott was knew it wasn’t going to be there, but couldn’t help being a little sad about missing it. We got a picture of him at the dock, and are calling it, “A broken man on a Halifax pier.” As a consolation, we ate supper at the restaurant called the Bluenose II, but it was hardly a substitute.