Tabs 1-3: Halifax!

“Oh. My. God… WHERE ARE THE TABS OF FUN???!?!?”
Adrienne

After and brief and terrifying separation between us and the Tabs of Fun at the Toronto Airport, (in which I may or may not have [uncharacteristically] left the Tabs at the Air Canada check-in counter) the trip got off to a good start.

Flight was on time and uneventful, although we had a new plane and so got to watch Entourage and Spiderman 3 on the way there. Car was fine although it is a PT Cruiser. It drives like a school bus, has pick-up like a tank but it runs and the brakes work. It was also the last mid-size available so it’s ours for the next two weeks.

We found the B&B all right although we’re not really impressed. The first “B” of bed is fine but the second “B” for breakfast is horrible. The food really sucks – runny eggs, undercooked bacon, and goopy porridge…every day. So, it’s really just a “B”. Also, I have found that some people’s definition of “has internet” does not relate to my definition of “has internet”. When I am told a place “has internet”, I expect to be able to connect to the world wide web rather than just the hotel router. Ahem. Hence the blogging delay.

We were able to meet up with the lovely and talented Hilary the first day.

Hilary is a Halifax native and we got an excellent introduction to the city. Hilary is also a knitter (and therefore yarn enabler) and so one of our first stops was The Loop

where I bought two skeins of Celestial Merino Dream in “seashell”, hand-dyed in Nova Scotia.


I have decided to limit myself in terms of yarn purchases to yarn not available at home and then only purchase it if it hails from Nova Scotia... or PEI. I know. I also celebrate my amazing self-restraint.

Hilary showed us around, took us for a drink at the Lower Deck, took us to dinner at the Economy Shoe Shop, then took us to hear Maritime music at the Celtic Corner in Dartmouth where her friend was performing. Unlike in Toronto, people sing along with the live entertainment in Nova Scotia. Thanks to a traumatic childhood which involved Rita McNeil and the Chieftains, I was at least able to sing along to Tell me Ma and the Drunken Sailor. Hilary has since kindly made us CDs to fix the fact that we don’t know who Stan Rogers is and expand our Maritime music knowledge.

We totally blend in now.

Day two was great – went to the public gardens, founded in 1753 and now one of the best modern examples of Victorian landscaping,


the Citadel, one of the four forts occupying the site since 1749, from which you can look down on the entire city,


and the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia where we had lunch at the Cheapside Café – another excellent suggestion from Hilary. Dinner was at Bish – absolutely delicious!

The next day was more “relaxed” by our standards. First off to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic for a really excellent exhibition on pirates. The exhibit promised to separate myth from reality – which it did, with considerable gore. Not all pirates were sexy like Johnny Depp pretending he’s Keith Richards. Most were dumb drunks who ended up tortured and hanged, left to rot for years at the harbour’s edge as a warning to others not to pirate. Not really a children’s exhibit but fascinating for the rest of us. Did you know pirates never really made people walk the plank? And they didn’t bury their treasure? (They spent it on booze... and perhaps yarn...)

I think I know some pirates.


Marco also enjoyed the pirate exhibit, almost as much as he enjoyed this new fashion headwear.


The museum also had a very interesting section on the Halifax explosion and on the Titanic disaster. We saw a real Titanic deck chair, although Marco preferred the faux Titanic deck chair.


I enjoyed reenacting the part where Rose goes up the staircase to meet Leo in her Lulu Lemon pants,


but not as much as I enjoyed being in charge of the CSS Acadia, a 1913 ship used to chart the ocean floor for 56 years until its retirement in 1969.

After that we went on the tour of the Alexander Keith brewery – the oldest in North America. Oddly, information on the brewing of beer on this tour was absent. Instead, the “tour” consisted of faked-up rooms in the Keith mansion with people in period costumes singing stupid songs and angling for audience participation. Dreadful. An audience participation debacle of the absolute worst kind. The free beer dulled the pain but only slightly.

In the evening, we drove PT to Point Pleasant Park, a 74 hectare park on the wooded peninsular point of Halifax. The city has leased the park from Great Britain for 999 years at the cost of 1 shilling per year. At the park, we watched a Shakespeare by the Sea production: All’s Well That Ends Well. It was excellent, although it got quite cold at the end. Honestly, ski jackets would have been appropriate and we have taken to wearing multiple sets of shirts and outwear to beat the cold.

See you in Peggy's Cove, Chester, and Lunenberg!