Hello, Halifax

At the end of March, beginning of April we planned a long weekend to slowly travel from Moncton, New Brunswick to Weymouth Falls, Nova Scotia. Along the way we spent two nights CouchSurfing in Halifax and a night Airbnb in Annapolis, Nova Scotia.

During this quick trip we explored Halifax, Peggy's Cove and Lunenburg - a 700
km journey!

Moncton ---> Weymouth Falls

Halifax

A city on the East coast of Nova Scotia commonly known for its links to the Titanic, interesting architecture and large harbour. We spent a day in Halifax, which was enough to visit the Farmers Market, museum, visit the public library and visit Citadel National Historic site. All of the above was in walking distance, so park up and go exploring!

The Farmers Market was large and hosted a variety of different goods from Chinese food to bread, to coffee to crafts. It's a typical Farmers Market and you can spend a fair while walking around and browsing - which is pretty much what we did.

Halifax Farmers Market

The Maritime Museum is a must see if you love everything about the Titanic and anything nautical/maritime. Tickets are fairly cheap at $10 for the two of us giving you access to several exhibitions. As a Titanic movie fan, I knew little about what actually happened in Halifax - 100% recommend, I won't give away any spoilers ;-)

The Titanic

The Halifax Library , if you like architecture you must go and see the library. We walked to the top floor and treated ourselves to a drink in the café with views over Halifax before walking around the library and taking a short rest. You can grab a book from the shelf and read in the peaceful quiet that the library has to offer, it's a lovely experience.

Halifax Library

Citadel National Historic site I am so glad we went here. We originally overlooked visiting this site but were persuaded by a girl from Saskatchewan to go and see this site. The site has great views over the city from a hill (an extremely steep hill...) and a fortress too. You'll see the Union Jack and Canadian flag flying and the fort does show an interesting insight into the colonial past of the city.

View from Citadel National Historic Site

Peggy's Cove

A beautiful site situated around an hour south of Halifax (depending on where you're staying). There is a lovely lighthouse, typical of most sites in Canada but the bit which takes your breath away at this site? The rocks, the waves and the sea. A great additional asset to this place is the souvenir shop; it has a toilet for the general public to use - a few and far between luxury for many of our trips and hikes!

Lunenburg

Lunenburg is a quiet town on the east cost of Nova Scotia and is located over an hour south of Halifax. We went during the quiet season so not much was open BUT if you can go there it is worth it for a quiet fish & chips lunch, views of the harbour and a stroll along the harbour front. It's a nice spot! The town is small, we walked around it in about 30mins visiting the UNESCO site and strolling past colourful buildings; it's a photogenic place.

View from our fish and chips lunch

Colourful Houses of Lunenburg

More colourful houses of Lunenburg!

Lunenburg from across the water.

Sleeping Arrangements

During our stay in and near Halifax we CouchSurfed with a lovely couple just outside the centre. We slept on one of the most comfortable sofas ever and enjoyed two enjoyable dinners with our hosts. Extremely welcoming!

In Annapolis, we stayed with two people in a lovely house. It's unlike any other AirBnB experience we've had - hotel style room with all the trimmings and an incredibly comfy bed all for $60 - Better value than any hotel, motel or inn!

To checkout more about our day to day travels follow @thetravellingpickups

Next Stop, Weymouth Falls, Nova Scotia

Nuances of Canada

We've been here a little over two months. Every country has their quirks and this is what we have noticed about Canada and Canadians over the past few months.

Basements are huge!

Every house has a huge basement underneath their home and it is massive. Imagine an attic without the sloping ceilings. It's cool that they have the extra storage space but they are also a bit creepy - particularly when you find a snake hidden behind some boxes!

Heating: where are the radiators?

Homes in Canada mostly seem to have heating vents & grills on the floor or at the bottom of the wall. The heating come from the (huge) basement and heats the homes this way, Only seen a few radiators during this trip ;-) They also call boilers "furnaces".

Close links with Britain

The opening question we've most often been asked is "where in the UK are you from?". It's really nice that most people recognise we're British rather e.g. Aussie or Kiwi, and almost everyone has some link to the UK through relatives. We end up talking about a random place around the UK just because a cashier in a shop happens to have an uncle there, which is a lovely addition to a standard day! They also have good teabags and most places have kettles, which is very welcome for our tea habits :)

Groceries are EXPENSIVE

Vegetables are typically around $2.50 a pound (around £3.30 a kg), even for cheaper root veg like onions. We're used to bulking out meals with veg but it's crazy how much more they are! Meat and cheese are also expensive, but by less of a margin. It's frustrating as we want to experiment with vegetables after working at the Healthy Rabbit cafe, but it costs a lot!

Junk food is expensive you don't find any £1 ($1.60) chocolate bars or bags of crisps here!

Toiletries are also expensive - most face wash, shampoo and shower gel costs over $5 (£3), whereas we'd always pick up whatever was on offer for £1 that week in the UK. Petrol is cheap though, around $1 per L (about 63p/L).

The nature is breathtaking

Canada has half the population of the UK, and is 38 times bigger - so there understandably is a lot more space. However, we weren't expecting the staggering beauty of a lot of the places we've seen. The forests, lakes, rivers and waterfalls are just amazing, and we've been lucky that the Canadian government have given out free National Park passes to everyone this year to celebrate Canada being 150. There are loads of great trails (which are often well signposted) and great views. Two highlights for us so far have been snowshoeing with freespirit tours through a forest regeneration area which was eerily silent, and seeing The Grotto, an icy and windswept cliff onto Lake Huron. Everyone keeps telling us how amazing British Columbia is and we can't wait to see it in September!

Snowshoeing

The Grotto

We're learning a lot about ourselves on this trip: what we want to do long-term with our careers, the kinds of jobs we would find rewarding and if we want to stay in Canada. It'll take some more time to figure all this out, but for now we're enjoying exploring and meeting new people!