I was glad not to run into the French lady staying down the hall. Last night I went downstairs to wash a load of clothes but the previous user hadn't come to move their clothes to the dryer. I took the other person's clothes out of the washer, placed them on the dryer (very neatly) and put mine in the washer. A half hour later I came back to check on my load. It was still washing so I was just standing around waiting when into the room flies a very irate French lady, smoke coming out of her ears. She chewed me up one side and down the other. "It is not allowed zat you should touch my clothes......." And on and on for 10 minutes. I was speechless. You would have thought I murdered her first born. She said I should have gone to the front desk to have them find her--which made no sense because they close down in the evening and how would they know who was washing anyway. I didn't point these things out to her. I just kind of stared at her in disbelief and let her rant. Man, I would hate to be traveling with her! G is much more mellow.
Mellow man and I headed south for Yarmouth. We stopped first in Liverpool at a cute little lighthouse where G got to blow the fog horn. There we learned about Privateers. They were legalized pirates, basically. The British crown gave them permission to seize American ships. But, no worries, we did the same to them.
The next stop was Shelburne, another frozen-in-time town. The waterfront looks much as it did in the 1780's, without the Disney fakeness. We visited a Dory shop where dories are still made. I bought a dory whirleygig for my flower garden. Our guide showed us the pointy thing from the front of a swordfish that a fisherman had to cut off when it came up through the bottom of his dory. (4 ft long). Swordfish love cod so when he smelled the cod in the boat he stuck his pointy thing (scientific name) up through the soft pine of the dory and got stuck. Luckily the fisherman carried a hacksaw so he sawed it right off.
Shelburne was populated by Loyalists who fled the U.S. after the Revolutionary War. The wealthy Loyalists went back to England, but 10,000 poorer ones fled to Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Black Loyalists came, too--but they were forced to live 7 km north of town.
We finally made it to Yarmouth by supper time. Yarmouth looks like a dump. Wish we had stayed in Shelburne.
G blowing fog horn:
The dory shop:
Aw, too bad about the French lady. You were much more diplomatic than I would have been.
ReplyDeleteI think it's great that those towns preserve their history and architecture. I suppose it is good for tourism but I like to think that some people like to preserve their local history and ancestry.