20020527

May 27, 2002

Day 18

Start: Shubie CG, Dartmouth, NS
End: 
Miles: 0

The low last night was 50f; the high today was 74f under mostly sunny skies. Downright balmy, compared with the past two weeks. Even the wind slackened to a light breeze. Tourists were running around in light slacks and windbreakers. Nova Scotians were in shorts and tee shirts. 

We rose at a decent hour, ate, and took the truck to the harbor parking lot at the ferry terminal. We took the next ferry to the Halifax side. The Halifax information center was close at hand, so we stopped there. Then we walked a little ways down the boardwalk to look at two old ships. One was HMCS Sackville, the last of the WWII corvettes. The other was the Acadian, which served Canada in both world wars – the only ship to do so. Their statue of a sailor, a memorial, is near here as well.

Then we went to the first street away from the waterfront (Water Street, naturally) and bought our tickets for the hop-off-hop-on London double-decker bus tour of the city, which would leave in just under an hour.

We did a power hike of eight or nine long blocks to a super-store that does film developing and dropped off the five rolls we’ve exposed so far. We hiked rapidly back in time to catch the departing coach.

The tour gave us a chance to sit for a while. They were trying a new audio system to describe what we were passing. The system uses Global Positioning System satellites to sense where the bus is. When the bus is in the appropriate position, the audio describing the building or scene is triggered. Clever.

We saw the provincial legislature building, the old citadel, the casino, the train station (with train ready to go west to Vancouver), cathedrals of several faiths, the chapel that was built in a day, and many more sights.

The story of the chapel that was built in a day was interesting. In the early days of the town, the Catholics 
had no church or land, so they asked the Anglicans for land on which to build a church. The Anglicans gave it to them conditionally – they had to build their church on it in a day. On a Saturday, two thousand men assembled with all the materials ready to put in place. It was built in the day. 

Some scoff at this story, saying the builders were a gaggle of Irishmen who had been told they were building a pub.

We took the tour all the way around to the starting point at the waterfront. Then we hiked up the waterfront to a shopping area in a set of old warehouses. We had lunch in the food court there (great local ale) and looked through every store. 

Then we hiked up a street, looked at shops, up another street, looked at shops, south a bit on that street, and 
looked in a bookstore that Susan would love except it had no cat. We bought a few pins and books and a couple of on-sale tee shirts in all this.

Then we hiked some more, down to the store where we’d left the film. We picked up the prints, but they didn’t put them on CD as they indicated they would when we dropped them off. It seems that takes longer and couldn’t be done within the promised time, so they just did the prints. Communications problem, I guess. We’ll have to bring the prints home and scan them into digital format. 

We sat outside the train station next to the film place looking at the prints, because there was a stop on the hop-off-hop-on bus at that point. We’d only looked at two sets of the five when the bus came along and we hopped back on. We rode it to the starting point to save hiking more.

Around the corner was a restaurant/bar on a wharf sticking out into the harbor. We went there for a large ale for me and a glass of Nova Scotia Chardonnay for Dolores. We chatted with the bartender and gradually our legs regained enough strength to continue.

We hiked around a bit, trying to figure out what to do for dinner. Neither of us felt too hungry, so we settled for a little grill up the street and had a light inexpensive dinner.

The rush hour was about over at this point, so we rode the upper, open, deck of the ferry back to the Dartmouth side without a large crowd. We stopped at a store, then went back to our little house in the campground. 

It certainly felt good to take off our shoes and put up our feet. 

I think we’ve seen enough downtown Halifax for one trip. Tomorrow, we’ll go to Peggy’s Cove and other not-too-distant attractions.