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Published: November 11th 2009
Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
All the leaves were brown, red, orange, yellow, green, (but the sky was grey
)We had been looking forward to this for a long time - a true holiday, not the crazy kind we had become used to where you stay in a different city every night. (I guess we have Dahlia to thank for that change in approach!). We had booked tickets with Anth’s frequent flyer points nearly a year ago, but had actually wanted to come since we first visited Canada in 2005. We loved it back then in Spring, but everywhere we went people told us ‘you should have been here in the Fall’. So we came in the Fall, to the eastern Atlantic provinces that we didn’t visit before; Prince Edward Island (PEI) and Nova Scotia. Unfortunately, everywhere we went in the Fall, was closed for the season! ‘You should have come in the summer’ they said… we got very used to seeing signs on shops saying ‘closed for season’! Which was OK, because the point was to relax and see the colours.
So we flew from Prague to Toronto and had a connection to Halifax, Nova Scotia in the morning where in true North American fashion we picked up our rental SUV that was about the size of our
first apartment. The 4 hour drive to our cottage in PEI took us via New Brunswick and over the Confederation Bridge which connects PEI to mainland Canada. Allegedly it is the longest bridge in the world at 12.9kms (a claim we also heard in Denmark) although Wikipedia disagrees with both, so who knows!
If you’ve ever seen or read Anne of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island was exactly what you’d expect. Whilst at first we thought it seems just like a sleepy little island where not much is happening, we soon realized this was the point! The interior is full of rolling farms, with long grass, and red dirt roads surrounded by woods (in their red and orange glory). The coasts are dotted with red cliffs, sandy beaches and postcard lighthouses. And all the villages are tiny - normally named after the bridge over the nearby stream, and full cute shops (closed for the season) and lobster traps. We had hired a cottage near Cavendish on the north shore, in what is known as ‘Anne’s Land’ since it’s where Lucy Maud Montgomery lived, and where the books are all set. It made a great base for the week since
nowhere on the island was more than about a 2 hour drive, and it really seemed to be the most beautiful part.
We had helpfully been warned that Monday was Canadian Thanksgiving, and that everything that wasn’t already ‘closed for the season’ would be closed. So we made hay while the sun shined and shopped all Sunday - the most important items being Butterball Turkey and the famous PEI Potatoes… Thanksgiving essentials. The coolest thing about the potatoes was that even though we were shopping in a supermarket, the potato bags had been hand packed and displayed with a sign saying which local farmer grew them! So we celebrated Thanksgiving, albeit a little later than we had planned (the Turkey hadn’t defrosted in time, so we ate lunch at 7pm!) No dramas - gave us time for a very chilly Thanksgiving
beach walk at Cavendish. It’s such a nice beach - easily the best we’ve seen since leaving Australia.
Luckily one of the things not closed that week was Green Gables - the actual house that inspired the books. It’s now run by Parks Canada, and you can walk through the house which is set up just like
the books described. It was originally owned by relatives of Montgomery and she would visit in summer. You can walk around the property including the ‘Haunted Woods’ and ‘Lover’s Lane’ which were just like postcards with dirt trails, and wooden bridges and so many coloured leaves. That evening we made it to the last Lobster Supper of the season in North Rustico (a harbour town 15mins from our cottage). Steph had always wanted to try lobster and since it was only $18 in PEI it seemed like the thing to do! Still, neither of us are any the wiser what the big fuss about lobster is.
The rest of the week was fairly low key though, short walks in the woods, drives along the coast, shopping in Charlottetown, and relaxing in the cottage doing puzzles, playing games and watching the 500+ channels on the satellite TV! (We miss TV in English, but were also reminded how much time you can waste!)
At the end of the week we had to drive south and take the ferry from PEI to Nova Scotia. It turned out to be one of those situations where you have so much time to kill
you don’t know what to do, and then all of a sudden you’re racing down a dirt road to make it in time pay $50 for a crappy little ferry ride (full of loud teenage girls). From there it was about 3 hours to Baddeck where we were staying 3 nights.
Baddeck is jointly famous as the gateway to the Cabot Trail and as a place that Grahame Alexander Bell once had a summer home, and so they have appropriated all credit for the invention of the telephone. Still, it’s a really cute little town. We were staying at a B&B that reminded me so much of the one on Groundhog Day if you can picture it. The hostess was a lovely animated lady, who wore a lot of makeup, and had eyebrows painted on so that she always looked surprised. Dahlia LOVED her (I guess she likes cartoons). In fact Dahlia made it her business to make friends with everyone in the breakfast room by staring at them until they stared back, then giving a huge smile. (Later on she modified the end bit of this routine to be a raspberry or sticking her tongue out.)
Our
first full day there we did the drive around the famous Cabot Trail (the northern loop of Nova Scotia). It took about 7 hours including stops and was spectacular. Some foggy, rainy weather meant that some of the more amazing views of the coastal cliffs where somewhat reduced, but the colours of all the trees made up for it. Other than the scenery, the highlights of the day including spotting a moose (we were unsuccessful 5 years ago) and shopping in cute little Acadian (French) village called Chéticamp. The lowlight of the day was Joe’s Scarecrow Farm just outside this town. We kept reading in brochures all day about this great collection of scarecrows, but it was downright weird - possibly even creepy. They didn’t even have straw - just old clothes and rubber masks on a piece of wood (including a small ground of children holding hands, a few American presidents and a couple of aliens). And the big challenges of the day were trying to not get caught behind slow cars on the single lane road, and searching for the perfect lunch spot. Eventually we backed up the car to look over a stream and sat in the
Sydney!
The big fiddle...must be the Australian connection inspiring the 'BIG' fascination boot. Perfect 😊
Other than that there isn’t much to do in Cape Breton, especially in the rain. We visited the old mining town of Sydney - mostly for the novelty of telling people where we were from when they asked- and Louisburg which is an old French fort to protect against the British and Americans (operating kind of like an Old Sydney Town or Sovereign Hill - but closed for the season).
The weather cleared up for our long drive south the next day from Baddeck to the capital of Nova Scotia, Halifax (4 hours). A Dahlia meltdown meant we had a 1 hour pit stop in a Wal-Mart somewhere in the middle, but arrived in time for an evening walk. Not far from our hotel we discovered a large botanical gardens type park, and right in the centre of it was a Dahlia patch! Needless to say we looked at every one of them (dozens) and took lots of photos of Dahlia with them… hopefully she’ll find it amusing one day. We went back to our hotel room, which had a fireplace (!) and put it to good use, toasting marshmallows for s'mores.
We totally
fell in love with Halifax, it is a small city with a lot of charm, and a really interesting history which we discovered over the next couple of days. We started at Pier 21, a museum dedicated to the immigration history of Canada, and the place where all immigrants to Canada landed between 1928 and 1971 when they started arriving by plane. We were worried at first because in our tour group of 20+ we were the youngest by about 40 years, but we changed our mind once it started. It turns out that quite a few of them had immigrated via Pier 21 after WWII and it was quite emotional hearing their stories about coming over. There were some really interesting things like how they got given this sweet bread (ie white bread) and how the men and women were separated on the boats on the way over and the women got stuck with all the kids! Next we went to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic where the 2 best exhibits were on the titanic and the explosion of 1917. Halifax was the closest city to the Titanic wreck, and was the base for the rescue so it
had an exhibit with stories and deck chairs from the Titanic. The story explosion of 1917 was insane. Mont-Blanc, a massive WWI ammunitions ship, collided with another ship in the harbour and caught fire. After the crew fled, it drifted toward the city where everyone gathered at the harbour to watch, not knowing what it was carrying. When it exploded it was the biggest explosion in history before Hiroshima, and flattened the city. It killed about 2,000 people and injured another 9,000. It was an amazing exhibition with lots of personal accounts. Finally we went to the Halifax Citadel (the British’s defense against the Americans and French), where there were a lot of canons and a great view of Halifax.
So with our trip almost over we flew back to Toronto where we had 2 final days. It didn’t start well when we arrived at the hotel to discover we had accidently booked for the following week. Luckily they had a room. Phew! Other than a lot of shopping (clothes, shoes etc are one thing that are not cheap in Prague - especially kids clothes), we went up the CN Tower and prepared for the big trip home. The
flight was the low point - not only were we stuck in Amsterdam airport for 6 hours when Czech Airlines changed our flight without telling us, but we caught swine flu on the plane! A not so perfect end to a perfect holiday. 😊😞
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