Monday, July 27 - to Lakewood

Last day, sigh.  Time for the "Best ......" List:

Best restaurant:  Norseman Restaurant at L'Anse aux Meadows NL
Best bouillabaisse: Java Jack's restaurant in Rocky Harbour NL
Best dessert:  blueberry crisp at the Acadian Village. NS
Best seafood chowder:  L - Bistro in Annapolis Royal. G - Maritime Inn in Antigonish NS
Best fish cakes:  Quebec City, down below the Frontenac, Q
Best crab: Norseman Restaurant NL
Best seafood pasta dish:  Rhubarb Restaurant in Indian Harbour NS
Best lobster: everywhere!
Best beer:  1892, a Quidi Vidi NL beer, full bodied reddish Amber.
Best hotel: Frontenac Q
Best 3 B&Bs:  Garrison House NS, Dove House NS, Victorian Inn, NS
Best 3 Re-enactments:  L-L'Anse aux Meadows, G-Port Royal, Acadian Village
Best hike:  Hirtle's Beach Trail (with J)
Best museum:  J C Williams Dory Shop in Shelburne NS
Best memory - L: standing on the very spot where Leif Erickson slept.
Best memory - G:  watching L'Hermione come into Lunenburg Harbour.
Best chairs:  the Adirondacks of all colors found EVERYWHERE in NL and NS! We even found two red ones out on a desolate hike in the far northern reaches of NL:

Here are some by our last motel in NS

And some behind a coffee shop in a fishing village.

Goodbye Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.  We'll be back!

Sunday, July 26 - Peggy's Cove and Indian Harbour

Peggy's Cove, a small fishing village just south of Halifax, is one of Nova Scotia's top attractions.  So we saved it for our last night in NS.  What a disappointment! Tourism has totally ruined what I'm sure was once a lovely quiet place.  Now all you see are cars and people.  We left after about 15 minutes.  Luckily our motel is down the road in Indian Harbour.  Here's the sign for the local pub:

Saturday, July 25 - to New Minas

G wants to rent a place for a month next summer in NS.  At breakfast we met a woman from D.C. who does just that.  She rents a cabin in Shelburne for a month every summer.  We compared travels and it was spooky how alike our tastes are.  Favorites:  Hobart (Tasmania), Venice, Shelburne, Annapolis Royal, libraries in any town.  We both dislike cruises.

We headed north on Hwy 101 toward New Minas.  We happened on a sea glass fair in Kentville.  We met lots of friendly local people who pick up glass along the shore and make jewelry and art out of it.  

It was a misty day so we looked around for things to do indoors which included a lovely Georgian mansion and a visit to a lovely pub where I had pan fried Fundy haddock -- a local specialty -- and a lovely Guinness, too.

This is Diane who sews big bags for carrying driftwood, etc. She was fun to talk to--she introduced us to her 11 yr old granddaughter who sold us her driftwood art.

      I'm fascinated by the huge tides in the Bay of Fundy.  I am less fascinated by these orange letters  but I don't know how to Change them.  Holy Smokes, now the margins are going nuts!I showed you a picture of the river in Digby at low tide yesterday.  This one taken on the Cornwallis River at 1 pm today is better:

Now here is the same river at high tide tonight at 8 pm.  Isn't that amazing?  It rose 39 feet in 6 hours.

Also amazing, the orange type has disappeared.  But the margins are still doing weird things.

 

:

Friday, July 24 - Annapolis Royal

We explored the area around Annapolis today.  First stop, Digby, known as the scallop capital of the world.  There were a lot of fishing boats in the harbor and every restaurant boasted about their scallops.  We settled on a place with outside seating overlooking the sea.  Their special was bacon-wrapped scallops in a maple whiskey sauce.  It sounded so awful we had to try it.  They were good!  And you could tell the scallops were fresh off the boat.  I don't know if I'll be able to eat Costco's frozen scallops again.

Next stop, Bear River.  Our map was incorrect (we found out later) and we explored half of Nova Scotia trying to find it.  It was worth it-- cute little artist colony where many of the buildings are on stilts because of the high tides.

P, J, C, and R:  Have a good time on your trip to Williamsberg and Jamestown tomorrow.  I'm sure you will be doing a blog (in the ancient Whipple tradition).  Or at least send me emails.  C:  check out the cannons for Grandpa.   J and R:  send me photos of flowers and haystacks.  P:  find out who went from Jamestown to Port Royal in NS and pillaged the trading post in 1613.  (And people complain about the Vikings!)

I took this at low tide.  At high tide the water will be as high as the dark mark on the rocks.   As a reference point, see G standing at top, by the two posts.  It's amazing how much the water rises.  And then at low tide there are giant mud areas.  The birds love that.

Thursday, July 23 - Annapolis Royal

After a nice breakfast at Garrison House, we headed downriver to the Port Royal Historical Site.  This is a reconstruction of Sieur de Monts and Samuel Champlain's fur-trading post.  I've heard of Champlain but not this de Monts fellow.  Turns out de Monts was the head guy--Champlain was merely his hired cartographer.  But Champlain has gotten all the publicity.  The French, under de Monts set up shop in port Royal in 1605--two years before Jamestown.

But then eight years later, when all the Frenchmen in the post had gone across the river to help with the wheat harvest, a ship full of Brits from Jamestown came, found no one at home, stole everything in the post and then burned it down!  The local Indians saved them from starvation until help came from France.

Now Canada has built this great replica.  G says this is the best historical site we've seen on this trip.  We found a couple of red Adirondack chairs overlooking the Bay.  Great place to eat our picnic lunch and chat with other visitors--most of them from farther west in Canada.  We see very few Americans.

Then we drove a ways down the peninsula and hiked to a pretty waterfall.  Delaps Cove Wilderness Trail.

When we got back to town we stopped at the Tidal Generating Station.  Western Nova Scotia is located on the Bay of Fundy, home of the world's most extreme tides.  They can rise 50 feet!  So it's a good place for generating electricity from the tides.  G can tell you all about it. Ask him sometime.

Back home we stopped at the grocery store and bought veggies and fruit for supper.  And now I'm sitting by the second floor landing because there's no wifi on the third floor in our room.  There are two chairs here in this nook so one of the second floor ladies stopped to chat.  She's about my age, traveling with two friends.  They are from Ottawa.

We had such cute teapots at breakfast:

Here is a picture of the Port Royal post:

Wednesday, July 22 - To Annapolis Royal

Annapolis Royal is a seaside town an hour north of Yarmouth.  It came highly recommended so we are going to stay here three nights.  It's one of Canada's oldest settlements, founded by the French in 1605, then destroyed by the British in 1613, then rebuilt by the French Acadians and back and forth for another hundred years.

We explored the heart of downtown:  Fort Anne, farmers market, the Royal Gardens, peach tart, and the local barber shop where G had a haircut.  Oh yes, we also stopped at the library--a favorite stopping point wherever we go.

All this tired us out so we went back to our lovely room at the Garrison House.  It's an old Victorian house across from Fort Anne.  G can look out our 3rd floor dormer window and check on the cannon in the citadel yard.  Being on the top floor our room has slanted ceilings (where G can bump his head,) lots of nooks and crannies and old creaky floors.  The wallpaper is that blue and white French scene type--I forget the name.  Really charming.  G doesn't do charming but at least he can see the fort.

The restaurant in our B&B is well know in Nova Scotia and lived up to its reputation.  I had poached salmon with yogurt and caper sauce.  So fresh the salmon almost leaped onto my plate.  G had scallops-also very tasty.  But best of all--very fresh veggies of all sorts, even beet tops, which I love.  I had just been talking with someone from Nova Scotia who was complaining about the lack of fresh vegetables being served in NS restaurants.  Usually you get canned peas or, worse, canned beans.  We skipped dessert as we both have gained about 10 pounds on this vacation.

This is Sandy.  She was selling hand-sewn items at the farmers market.  She's holding up an "adult clothing protector" fastened with one Velcro fastener.  She called it a bib. (Tsk, tsk)

The Annapolis Royal Gardens are fantastic!  They have over 2000 rose bushes.  And 40 different types of heather!  This is New Scotland, after all.  Here are roses and heather.

Tuesday, July 21 - Yarmouth

Well, Yarmouth isn't a dump, but it is a bit dull.  The folks at the Tourist Information Center were very nice, though, and not only found a couple things for us to do today, but also helped us book motels for the remainder of our trip.  I usually book rooms on the Internet, but since wifi is spotty here, it was easier to have them do it.

We went to le village historique acadien about a half hour out of town where we learned about the history of the Acadians.  As you probably remember from reading Longfellow's poem "Evangeline" in eighth grade (we did in Heimdal, North Dakota anyway), the British deported about 12,000 Acadians from Nova Scotia around 1755 and quite a few ended up in Louisiana.  I didn't know that many others went to New England and other places in the colonies.  I also didn't know that many who were deported were allowed to come back to Nova Scotia after a few years.

This Acadian historical seaside village employs many of the descendants of those who came back.  It was really interesting to hear their stories.  Since there were very few tourists, we could spend a long time talking to them.  Meanwhile, they also showed us various aspects of village life in the 1850's.

Here's a young man who spends 6 months lobster fishing and 6 months working at this village.  He's showing G how an old wooden lobster trap used to work.  During lobster fishing season he shows up at the dock at 1 am to head out to deep water where lobsters hang out.  During peak season he will get back home at 11 pm.  Probably won't even shower, he's so tired.  He's not married--he said most girls won't put up with his schedule ( to say nothing about his bathing practices.)

I like to see the different ways of stacking hay around the world.  This is called a salt haystack because it is found in the salt marshes. These stacks are raised above the damp ground.  They are shaped so that rain runs off. After the marsh freezes in the winter, the farmer can drive his hay wagon over the frozen ground to collect the hay.