If you don't check in regularly, the first part of this "playing tourist" report is somewhere down below - covering my business trip to Amherst, NS and Charlottetown, PEI.
This installment covers my Victoria Day weekend (I'm just now, on July 25, getting around to finishing and posting it!)
My friend Jose, who I used to work with in Ottawa, came in for the weekend, arriving around 5 on the Friday. She had never been to the east coast before, and was excited to have a friend here who she could stay with. I admit I was a little nervous about saying she could stay with me - my "apartment" is extremely small. Really, it's not much bigger than an average-sized bedroom. But...I do have a spare bed -- the couch converts into a very comfortable bed -- so I told her I'd love to have her.
Friday evening we didn't do anything special. We came back to my place for a little while and then went in search of a restaurant that the guy who sold me my car had told me about the day before. I wasn't sure if I could find it, but there are lots of restaurants around here, so I knew we wouldn't go hungry.
We did manage to find it - out on Waverley Road - the MicMac Beveridge House and Grill. The parking lot was jammed with cars - a good sign. The restaurant was in a converted house. When we walked in the front door, I admit I was disappointed. I'd been expecting a pub-like atmosphere, as the car salesman had said they serve "the best pub-grub in Dartmouth." It was nothing like a pub. It made me think of the modern equivalent of a medieval British public eating house. Basically no decor to speak of. Just cheap tables, linoleum floors and tables and chairs jammed into every square inch... even lots of very long family-style tables for groups, where strangers had to share their table with strangers when there weren't enough smaller tables available. I hoped we wouldn't have to sit at one of those. I was having misgivings about the place before we even sat down.
The place also had a smoking room, which was a new thing to me. Completely enclosed and separately ventilated, the bar was in there, and was the most pub-like part of the whole restaurant. The only table available was right beside the smoking room, with the side entrance right behind, but we had no choice, so we sat there. Every now and then we'd catch a whiff of cigarette smoke, but it wasn't too bad. The worst part of the evening turned out to be the restaurant's ventilation system, which came on every five or ten minutes, blasting us with a cold wind. Nothing to be done for it though, so we just put our jackets on and carried on with dinner.
In the blink of an eye, this very attractive fellow comes to our table to take our drink order. One of those silver-haired young people who are so attractive ;-) He was a consummate flirt too, and kept up a stream of charming, funny banter with us every time he was at our table. We both ordered Keith's on draft and he shot off to get our drinks.
A few moments later, the dinner waiter came by. They do it that way in some of the pubs and bars here...I guess it keeps things running more quickly when the food waiters don't have to worry about drinks. The dinner waiter was as dark and burly as the drink waiter had been fair and slender. At first he seemed a tad gruff, but he was just getting warmed up. He was just as charming and funny as the first guy, although more in a friendly way than flirtatious. Jose ordered fish cakes and I, craving red meat, ordered their ribs. And away went the server. The place was packed - they must have been run off their feet!
We waited quite a white before our beers came. The cutie apologized a couple of times as he was putting our drinks down. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he said. "You will be," I teased with my usual line. At that, the cutie just looked at me with a naughty grin, stroked my arm up and down a few times and said "I've been a baaaad boy." And then he was off again, leaving Jose and I laughing our asses off with delight.
Jose said her fish cakes were phenomenal. I almost wished I'd ordered them myself - what good is living in the Maritimes if you don't eat seafood at every opportunity! But my ribs were quite good anyway - not the best I've had, but still quite good. We both enjoyed our dinners, shared a couple glasses of beer, flirted with the waiters and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. I'll definitely go back there, as much to try the fish cakes as to flirt with the cute drink waiter again! He's married though, alas.
On the way home we stopped at the liquor store (NSLC here) and bought a couple bottles of wine and some Mott's Extra Spicy Caesars. Shared a bottle of wine, chatted and watched tv for the rest of the evening. Jose keeps a trip journal, so we filled in the details of the evening while I puttered around and watched tv.
I had figured out our whole weekend before Jose arrived, and Saturday was our day to explore downtown Halifax. Around mid-morning we left my place and drove to the ferry. I'd been worried about the weather, as they'd been forecasting cloud and drizzle for the whole weekend. But Saturday rose, and remained, a perfectly glorious late-spring day with clear blue skies, light breezes and very comfortable temperature for walking around in all day. We took the ferry across to Halifax, sitting up top out in the open. Jose was delighted with it. She took some pictures - I got a couple of nice ones of her sitting in front of the ferry's bridge.
Over in Halifax, we walked along the harbourfront boardwalk to my office. I'd never tried to get in there during off hours before, and we had to walk around the building a couple of times to find the right entrance, but we got in and I got to show Jose my office. She was suitably impressed! We rested for a few minutes, used the washrooms and then headed off to explore the wonderful Saturday market in the Alexander Keith's Brewery building.
The Saturday Market in halifax is almost as cool as the Saturday market on Salt Spring Island in BC. All indoors, though. It takes place in a rabbit warren of rooms on the lower floors of the brewery, a beautiful old stone building on the waterfront. One of the neatest parts is a low, arched stone walkway which turned out to be a spectacular place for a photo op. The market is PACKED every Saturday with both vendors and shoppers. Seems like every hippyish, goth, new age, witchy, back-to-the-lander in the maritimes must have a table or corner there where they sell their stuff. It's WONderful. I bought some brooches made of starched fabric cut into shapes of frogs and dragonflies and butterflies and such. Also bought a really nice hand-crafted lobster sun-catcher right from the gal who'd made it. Jose bought a gorgeous silver ring with a lime-green stone that went beautifully with her red hair and fair skin. She also found a nice necklace to go with it and picked up some local wine. I'll have to go back there sometime and get some of that wine...it was really nice.
After that we wandered up along Hollis Street and wound up at the Split Crow for lunch. One of my favourite spots in Halifax, it's the oldest pub in the province, first opened in 1749 as the Spread Eagle (after the German-style two-headed eagle logo) and affectionately referred to as the Split Crow by the sailors and merchants who frequented the place back then. Unfortunately, it's not in the same location as it was when it first opened, which would have been very cool, but still, a really nice, authentic East Coast/British style pub with great food.
After lunch we wandered around some more, window shopping. Wound up down along the boardwalk again, checked out the casino but didn't gamble. Found ouselves at Salty's restaurant for a couple of drinks and then wandered along to Murphy's Waterfront Restaurant, where we indulged ourselves in a lobster dinner, complete with up-to-the-elbow lobster guck and butter-spattered plastic bibs. It was heavenly and SO much fun.
Jose makes a very agreeable companion for such wanderings.
After dinner, we headed back across the harbour to Dartmouth. We drove to Cow Bay, which was the first place I "discovered" in Nova Scotia back when I first got here and went out for a drive one Sunday. Such a pretty spot, but unfortunately, it was too far dusk by the time we got there to see much, so we just went home and spent the rest of the evening resting our legs and relaxing.
The next day was Peggy's Cove day, and we headed out early in the morning with a map and nothing much else. We took the long way there, zigging and zagging in and out of all the coves and harbours along the way. It was a grey day, finally agreeing with the forecast, but the fog and gloom did nothing to dampen our spirits. In fact, it added to the ambiance! The fog in Nova Scotia is a thing unto itself...and a pleasure to witness. Although, I'm sure I wouldn't feel that way if I'd lived here for years and gotten sick of it!
We went through all the places I remembered visiting with Phil, my ex, when we visited here on our honeymoon. Mahone Bay, Chester, Peggy's Cove, Lunenburg and dozens and dozens of other tiny little villages nestled along the water's edge. Peggy's Cove seemed unfamiliar to me for some reason - I wonder if we gave it a pass way back then. It's spectacular...but a one-shot town, as one travel writer described it. It's astonishingly small. Only about 60 people actually live there. There's a visitor's centre and a restaurant. A couple of souvenir shops. And a lighthouse on the rocks. The rocks are what really blew me away. Spread out like a
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