At the end of May/beginning of June Justine and I had almost two weeks off and headed east to the Maritimes for our first big trip of the year. Alex was graduating from Dal Law School, and we were honoured to have been invited to attend her graduation ceremony. As I had never been to the Maritimes, and Jus had only ever visited PEI, it seemed like the perfect excuse to plan a larger trip around the big day. This is the first post of many to come that captures our grand adventure.
To maximize our time, we took the redeye from Vancouver leaving Wednesday night getting into Halifax on early Thursday morning. We arrived about 8:30 a.m., and sadly I had not been able to get much sleep on the flight. Justine did a little better than I did, but was still not feeling great. For some reason the seats seemed super uncomfortable, and I just could not settle in. Our flight arrived about the same time that Alex and Matt arrived, and we ended up meeting them in the baggage area at the Halifax airport. We went our separate ways at that point, each of us picking up a rental car and Justine and I drove south from Halifax to spend the day exploring the area around Peggy’s Cove and Lunenburg.
Peggy’s Cove
Justine and I on the opposite coast - we made it to Peggy’s Cove!
Our trips are always jammed full of adventures, and this one was going to be busy! We also don’t like to miss anything, and since we could not check into our apartment until about 3:00, we figured a day touring around would help keep us awake and give us a chance to see some of the sights.
There was no point in wasting a day! So the plan was to head south and see the famous Peggy’s Cover and Lunenburg - we figured that would make for a great first day!
The drive to Peggy‘s Cove was pretty quick and easy, a little less than an hour. The weather was surprisingly nice, or at least nicer than it was supposed to have been, and we found it pretty easy to park quite close to the famous lighthouse at Peggy’s Cove.
Not surprisingly, it was quite busy and there were a lot of people wandering around the lighthouse. The thing that struck me, the most was that the lighthouse was quite a bit smaller than I expected, but still a beautiful spot.
We spent a little bit of time exploring around the lighthouse, and then walked down the hill into the little village itself. Peggy’s Cove is a cove just at the bottom of the hill a little ways from the lighthouse and has a bunch of very cool little houses and fishing huts built out on the rocks around the cove.
We spent a little bit of time exploring, taking some pictures and generally just enjoying the warm morning After that we walked up the hill on the other side and explored a little further, including taking a short stop in the visitor center.
From there, we headed back to the car and then continued our drive.south to see what else we could explore on the day. On the road just outside of the small town there is a memorial to Swissair Flight 111. On 2 September 1998, the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Halifax Stanfield International Airport at the entrance to St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada. The crash site was 8 kilometres from shore, roughly equidistant from the small fishing and tourist communities of Peggy's Cove and Bayswater. All 215 passengers and 14 crew members on board the plane were killed, making the crash the second-deadliest aviation accident to occur in Canada. The memorial is a peaceful, thoughtful memorial to the people that lost their lives in the crash.
The flight to Halifax had been pretty bad, as I didn’t sleep much at all. The seats were super uncomfortable, and I kept getting woken up when I did managed to drift off. So I was struggling a lot on the drive. Thankfully, Justine did all of the driving today as I kept falling asleep as we drove about an hour south to our next stop in Mahone Bay.
Mahone Bay was pretty little town was recommended to us and it probably would’ve been a lot nicer other than the fact that they had the whole centre of town ripped up doing roadwork. So I put a bit of a damper on the visit. There are three old churches that are the main highlight of this town. But sadly, because of the roadwork, we did not really stop to explore them. We made a quick stop at Saltbox Brewing, just off the Main Street. We were hoping to get lunch, but they did not serve food. But the beer was good!
After our aborted lunch, we continued about 20 minutes south to Lunenburg, famous as the home port of the Bluenose and Bluenose II sailing ships.
By the time we got to Lunenburg, we were starving and need some lunch. We thought we should go for something typically east coast, and so we decided to have lunch at Fish Shack, overlooking the harbour. I was torn between going all out on the lobster, or scale it back. We decided on the fish and chips (which was delicious) but did see another group digging into lobster, so there were some pangs of regret.
Our fabulous lunch spot.
The view from the patio where we ate lunch.
The fish and chips were pretty great, as was the view.
After lunch, we walked down to the harbour to check out the Bluenose II. The ship was in dock, doing its last early season maintenance before the busy tour season. It’s a beautiful ship, and it would have been cool to go out on it. But sadly, that was not an option. Bluenose II is a replica of the fishing and racing schooner Bluenose, commissioned by Sidney Culverwell Oland and built in 1963 as a promotional yacht for Oland Brewery. Sidney Oland donated the schooner to Nova Scotia in 1971 and it has since operated as a sailing ambassador and promotional device for Nova Scotia tourism. In honour of her predecessor's record, Bluenose II does not officially race.
As we learned from the official store, the Bluenose was a fishing and racing gaff rig schooner built in 1921 in Lunenburg. A celebrated racing ship and fishing vessel, Bluenose under the command of Angus Walters, became a provincial icon for Nova Scotia and an important Canadian symbol in the 1930s, serving as a working vessel until she was wrecked in 1946. Nicknamed the "Queen of the North Atlantic", Bluenose was an undefeated champion from 1921–1938. Bluenose won the International Fishermen’s Trophy in her first year and remained undefeated in all major races during her 17-year racing career.
After the Bluenose we spent some time walking the Main Street and exploring the town. There were lots of cool shops to check out and we had a nice afternoon. There were three bookshops, although the one that I chose to pop into wasn’t really what I was looking for. We did poke a round a cool antique store that has some old, interesting pieces. Luckily there was no chance of getting any of it home, so there was no risk of buying!
At the far end of town, there was a Distillery that we stopped in at. They were themed around a blacksmith shop, and had a cool location in this very old shop and a beautiful still. We tried a few things and ended up buying a bottle of their whisky to have on the trip.
They also sell through a shop at the airport, and so we deferred a purchase until we were ready to leave and ended up picking up some of their gin when we left. Good thing I bought the whiskey at the beginning - they were sold out of it at the airport.
After finishing our exploration of Lunenberg, it was getting into the late afternoon and we needed to head to our AirBnB in Halifax. The apartment was perfect for us, in a great central location near the Citadel.
We were pretty wiped after our redeye flight and a full day’s exploration of the area south of the city. It was time for a quick nap! After getting refreshed it was time to catch up with Carolynne, Graham, Alex and Matt.
Alex had picked one of their favourite local spots near the University for us to meet for dinner. Justine and I decide to walk to dinner, as it was only about a 30 minute walk from the apartment. We met Carolynne, Graham, Alex and Matt at the Henry House pub, an excellent pub in an old historic house. It was great to see everyone, and I had an excellent steak and mushroom pie for dinner.
Justine put together some great collages of the different places we stayed on the trip. This was our apartment in Halifax.
Tomorrow was going to be a big day for Alex, and so we were all OK with having a bit of an early night. We stopped at a local grocery store to grab a few supplies, and grabbed an Uber home so we could get off to bed!
The map of our first day - we got to explore quite a lot!