a peek inside the fishbowl

It wasn’t what I expected. It was better.

I feel like I understand my own country a little better now.

I am a tiny bit embarrassed to show you the photo of the JUNGLE-THEMED room we booked during our stay in Halifax. Soooo, let’s just chalk it up to “the things parents do for their kids” and leave it at that, shall we?

Oh, and did you know there’s a GIANT HILL in the middle of Halifax??

Funny place to put a hill eh?

Ha. Just kidding. The hill is actually a historic site. And it was very impressive.

We tooled around the Museum of Natural History (free admission on Wednesday nights!) :

The downtown was pretty interesting too:

And we strolled around the public gardens:

And the old cemetery (can anyone guess who’s buried here?):

But we spent most of our time down by the harbour, just looking:

The next stop on our journey?

The stuff of postcards.

After Pictou we drove to a little town called Baddeck in Cape Breton. This is where I discovered a deep love for oatcakes.

We were in Baddeck for two nights, but should have spent another so we had more time to explore.

While in Baddeck we visited the Alexander Graham Bell Museum (which was great) and spent an entire day driving the scenic Cabot Trail.

The girls and I spent the morning at Ingonish Beach while Mark played a round of golf. The beach was gorgeous. We had a perfect beach day. We arrived early so for a while we had the place to ourselves:

There were fewer jellyfish here than in Pictou, so it made playing in the water that much more fun. 

After golf we packed ourselves up and continued the drive up the coast, which, in parts, was a little scary:

… and absolutely breathtaking:

At one point we were stopping at lookouts every five minutes.

There was so much to see. It was hard to get anywhere at that rate.

The slopes were so steep in parts our little Mazda struggled to get up them, AND struggled to get down them again, but wow, what views. Rock on one side, miles of ocean on the other…

We wondered how folks do it out here in the winter.

We stopped for a late lunch at a no-nonsense chowder house in Neils Harbour where I had the best clam chowder I’ve ever had in my entire life. We ate overlooking jagged cliffs and swooping cormorants. I spied a seal. It made my day.

The other side of Cape Breton – the Acadian side – was just as interesting, but totally different.

At first I wasn’t sure what it was, but we quickly realized that the landscape was missing the trees (not to mention the mountains) of the other coast, and was rather bald in spots. A natural occurrence, or not?

While we were here I planned a stop at Flora’s. I was enamoured of its rug hooking history. We bought a couple of mini rugs with a lobster motif, perfect little coasters.

It was neat to see how it’s done:

I wish I had a better photo of this place. It was a cacophony of souvenirs. Sarah picked out an amethyst for herself. Emma chose a worry stone. I was happy with my mini lobster rugs.