7th September – Halifax, NS – Lunenburg, NS – Peggy’s Cove, NS

Last night we called this guy, Robert from Tall Tale tours, about doing a tour to Lunenburg and Peggy’s Cove. We told us he had flaming red hair and was 6’10’’. Waiting out the front of the B&B, this shorter than imagined guy turned up and this was “Robert”. From the introduction we realized this guy was a joker. We grabbed a Japanese couple and we were off. “Do you like the Titanic?” was a question he asked. Tan was quick to say “yes!”. Halifax was a important port in the tragic Titanic story. A local boat sailed out in to the cold Atlantic Ocean and picked up the near frozen decomposing bodies floating in the water. Nice job! Pas! (French for Not!). Three cemeteries in the town host graves of the victims, Jewish, Catholic and Protestant. We visited the Protestant graves where about 100 people were buried. The sad thing is that quite a lot of them were not named as they were badly decomposed which led to them unable to be identified. Another pertinent point was the date, April 15, 1912 on all of them. We learnt lots of interesting facts, including the stone of J. Dawson, not Jack Dawson (aka Leo DiCaprio’s character), the pattern of the graves stones is in the same direction as the bow of the ship on the bottom of the sea and the individual numbers on the graves represent the order the bodies were removed from the sea. It was quite sad but interesting.

We took off to the south-west and we come up to the rotary (a roundabout) and there was this chick, slightly hippie-ish, thumbing a lift. Robert said he didn’t do it often but we ended up picking her up. Well, Ellen liked the cookies we gave her and she had a zipher, like a harp on a board. She was going home to Seabright, so we could take her most of the way. Tan and Robert said “take it away”, meaning not to throw it out the window but play to your heart’s content. Well, Ellen was just learning so she slipped her piece of music sheet paper under the strings and started plucking. The first song of her repertoire was “Baa-baa black sheep” and her confidence was extremely low. It didn’t matter as we all had fun and had some good chats. We dropped her off at her exit and kept on tracking south-west. Next stop was the beautiful sea-side town of Chester, with it’s narrow lanes and immaculate period houses. We stopped off and went for a walk along the shore past a memorial monument. Canada was quite active during WWI and also Norwegians called this area a safe haven during that time. There was a salt water pool, which of course was too cold to swim, apart from the fact that there was bugger all water within it!! Just out of town we picked up cheap punnets of blue berries and tasty strawberries. Next stop, was Mahone Bay, famous for it’s picturesque three churches bunched together on the shoreline. Nice and old too, mid 1700’s. Lunenburg was the key for us! It is a UNESCO world heritage site, (which we ticked that box Jimbo) and fantastic. The town is famous for it’s classic English town planning with straight streets and orthogonal corners. The buildings are all timber and classically Victorian amongst others. The town is patronized by Germans and Swiss and there style has embraced the town as well. Robert, the legend, drove us up to the golf course which gave splendid views of the harbour and the township. The fisherman’s wharf has brilliant red painted buildings which stuck out “like dog’s balls” as Tan said. Rob was amazed by this phrase but loved it! On the way back into town we stopped off and saw a 10’ high chunk of the Berlin Wall. Without a tour we wouldn’t have seen this. Why is a slab of the Berlin Wall in Lunenburg? Exactly the question we asked. When the wall come down, sections of it were removed and sent to towns all of the world which has German heritage. Anyway it was quite amazing. Berlin is on our list now (it always has been!).
In town we went to the Salt Shaker, where I feasted on a pound of mussels steamed in white wine and Propeller beer, and Tan had a wrap. Sitting out on the patio amongst lovely timber buildings with great company on a lovely day in UNESCO town is pretty special. Doug, Rells and Andy knows how this feels (Cesky Krumlov).

We checked out the Blue Nose II shop, and tried on a sou-wester, a strap on hat where the water drips down the bck of your coat and not your neck. The Blue Nose is a historic schooner from Nova Scotia which appears on the the Canadian dime (10 cent piece).

We walked along and found Andersons, a fantastic photographic gallery which sent our Japanese friends and Robert off. Actually it made Rob’s day!! In the Real Estate agents shop we found the The Herald Chronicle, the local Halifax/Nova Scotia rag, and page three were the Chasers. We read about their APEC stunt the night before and pissed ourselves laughing. It is now page three of the local paper. Great work!

More walking through the town, a 1753 church and other period buildings.The school in Lunenburg is unbelievable. It is right next to the cemetery with huge elms and is absolutely beautiful. Check out the photo. More houses and finally the stone with the declaration of the UNESCO site. Nice!
We headed out to Blue Rock in the afternoon sun. Once you get close to Atlantic, the temperature drops a good 5 degrees and it was just over the hill! Next stop was Peggy’s Cove, a granite outcrop, with large tors, which are erratics (entrained boulders from a retreating glacier). The cove here was very small and the town has a huge population of 60. This is reputedly the most photographed place in Canada (we added a few photos to the collection). The lighthouse was white and old, the carpark huge catering for the summer tourists and the sunset was good but hazy. A nice spot. We traveled in darkness back to Halifax, tired but we had a belter of day and saw an unbelievable amount of Nova Scotia.
In Halifax we downed a subway sub and retired ready for a another big New Scotland day. Yes… we booked another trip with Rob because we had so much fun today.