Nova Scotia

Clouds, leaden, black, heavy with rain, shafts of gold streaking through, being at sea can provide one with some great photo opps, but those same beautiful scenes can portend cancelled ports of call as this one foretold our not stopping at Prince Edward Island thus missing eating Prince Edward Island mussels at the source.

For the third time, during two cruises on the Caribbean Princess, we were awakened by the Captain at 6:00AM, with an announcement that gale force winds would mean canceling a stop, just as they had for Dublin and also kept us glued to the dock for twelve hours in Reykjavik, Iceland almost causing us to miss Greenland.

On the other hand, since we were missing a day on land, there is more time to write and to try to pick the best shots of our time in Nova Scotia, which happens to be quite a beautiful place.

There were four cruise ships in Halifax when we arrived and we were quite happy to get away from most of the crowds and head out on our own. Most of the tours were quite long and we didn’t think John would be up for six or seven hours on a bus, so we rented a car and off we went.

On our way to our first stop and shortly out of Halifax, we entered a heavily forested area dotted with many lakes and our first taste of great fall colors.

We continued on toward Peggy's Cove and Peggy Lighthouse enjoying the scenery and frankly the freedom of having our own car, which became readily apparent as soon as we turned off of the highway towards the Cove and into a tourist bus traffic jam.

There is one road in and out and probably no more than twelve houses in the town and all were overrun, but the place was undeniably picturesque. So we turned around and left to come back later when the crowds were gone.

The myth is that after a shipwreck a little girl, the only survivor, was washed ashore and did not know her name. The townspeople named her Peggy and later Peggy's Cove became this little town's name. What I find fascinating is that this town has been here since 1776.

Not only is the town a magnet for photographers, but the entire area around it is fascinating and beautiful.

As we continued our drive on the coast, we came across the memorial site for Swissair 111.

I had forgotten about it, but Kathy remembered. It is a stone's throw from Peggy's Cove. Unfortunately, all 229 aboard the flight perished.

We continued our picturesque drive past many little coves and very small villages each one worth a camera stop. The common theme, besides beauty, was that each seemed to support a small amount of lobster fishermen and when we finally stopped for lunch, we celebrated with three fantastic lobster rolls, in a tidy little restaurant overlooking the Atlantic. We were so satisfied with our find and lunch, none of us took a picture, but the following shots will give you an idea of the area.

It was starting to get late and we needed to head back to Halifax. What a lovely day we had and we had another port in this beautiful province to look forward to, Sydney.

This charming little town was settled by the British in 1765. It is on Cape Breton Island and today is known as the Fiddle Capital of the World and also boasts the World's Largest Violin.

This is all fitting that Cape Breton and Sydney are truly proud of their Scottish, Arcadian and Irish heritage and the music it has produced. Cape Breton is also home to the Cabot Trail, a stunningly beautiful drive along the coast, which, unfortunately, we passed on do the length of the tours and lack of any rental companies open on Sunday. We also thought that John would be done with touring by now, but he wasn't and kept asking why we were just walking around. Frankly, Sydney, while exceedingly pleasant is pretty dead.

We ended up passing a pleasant amount of time in a pub listening to a fiddle player of some renown, I forget his name, and eating the most delicious poutine yet, this one topped with pulled pork. 

We really liked Nova Scotia and from what we saw from the real estate listings, one could have a beautiful lake or ocean front property at a really reasonable price, but after walking around Sydney all day and listing to the clickity-clack of studded tires and seeing this sign, I thought the better of it.

Wow, those winters must really be rough.