Tuesday 10/7/08
Nova Scotia
Happy Birthday to Me! As Tennessee Ernie once sang, “another day older and deeper in debt.” We do a quick morning tour of Fredericton this morning and grab a peak of the Provincial Parliament buildings and riverfront downtown area. We are on the St. John river which will head south from here and eventually dump into the Bay of Fundy at St. John, New Brunswick.
We take off straight east to Moncton and grab lunch at St. Hubert’s. This is a Canadian chicken chain we have seen everywhere on this trip and there are always a ton of cars so we thought it must be good. Mary orders the chicken salad bagel and John gets the roast breast with fries. It turns out that they are out of the chicken salad bagel so Mary is stuck once again with a bowl of soup.
We swing a little further east skirting the Province of Prince Edward Island before turning south to Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia is a “bee” shaped island canted a little from southwest to northeast with Cape Breton Island as it’s head and its waist attached to New Brunswick at the tip of the Bay of Fundy. We all remember the Bay of Fundy from grade school geography as the place that has the highest tides in the world, climbing over 50 feet in some small inlets. What we see now are a lot of low lying wetlands and empty riverbeds that we assume fill up at high tide. Everything is wet.
It is about a 70 mile drive across Nova Scotia to Halifax, the capital, on the south coast bordering the Atlantic. The island is humped in the middle so the coastal wetlands give way to forests and upland lakes that are breathtaking. While we are driving a lot these days we remind ourselves that the purpose of this trip is to take in some great scenery so the driving is in fact the goal.
Halifax was the port of arrival for many European immigrants to Canada and the waterfront in downtown celebrates the city’s place in history. It is also a huge fishing port for boats leaving for the Grand Banks off to the northeast. After we check in to our hotel we take a hike around the large park area just to the north of downtown. It is good to see a bunch of good Canadian teenagers out on the practice football field running full contact drills. It probably just gets them in shape for hockey. We make a reservation for “Birthday” dinner before our late afternoon break and hurry back to get out of a very chilly wind.
Dinner tonight is at “Fid” which is the word for some sort of shipbuilding tool. One of our sources listed this in the top three restaurants in Canada, and other sources don’t mention it at all. Apparently it is just a matter of taste. The place is tiny with not more than forty seats and two waiters who are tag teaming the five tables that are occupied. Mary has a roast chicken served with Gnocchi and a fantastic sauce, and John has elk on squash pureed with citrus and ginger. The ginger-citrus combination blows away everything else on John’s plate so the dish doesn’t really work all that well, while Mary’s is perfect. Just a matter of taste.
The wind has settled down a bit as we hike back to our hotel, have a birthday nightcap at the bar and catch the Presidential debate. McCain did OK and so did “that one.”
Nova Scotia
Happy Birthday to Me! As Tennessee Ernie once sang, “another day older and deeper in debt.” We do a quick morning tour of Fredericton this morning and grab a peak of the Provincial Parliament buildings and riverfront downtown area. We are on the St. John river which will head south from here and eventually dump into the Bay of Fundy at St. John, New Brunswick.
We take off straight east to Moncton and grab lunch at St. Hubert’s. This is a Canadian chicken chain we have seen everywhere on this trip and there are always a ton of cars so we thought it must be good. Mary orders the chicken salad bagel and John gets the roast breast with fries. It turns out that they are out of the chicken salad bagel so Mary is stuck once again with a bowl of soup.
We swing a little further east skirting the Province of Prince Edward Island before turning south to Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia is a “bee” shaped island canted a little from southwest to northeast with Cape Breton Island as it’s head and its waist attached to New Brunswick at the tip of the Bay of Fundy. We all remember the Bay of Fundy from grade school geography as the place that has the highest tides in the world, climbing over 50 feet in some small inlets. What we see now are a lot of low lying wetlands and empty riverbeds that we assume fill up at high tide. Everything is wet.
It is about a 70 mile drive across Nova Scotia to Halifax, the capital, on the south coast bordering the Atlantic. The island is humped in the middle so the coastal wetlands give way to forests and upland lakes that are breathtaking. While we are driving a lot these days we remind ourselves that the purpose of this trip is to take in some great scenery so the driving is in fact the goal.
Halifax was the port of arrival for many European immigrants to Canada and the waterfront in downtown celebrates the city’s place in history. It is also a huge fishing port for boats leaving for the Grand Banks off to the northeast. After we check in to our hotel we take a hike around the large park area just to the north of downtown. It is good to see a bunch of good Canadian teenagers out on the practice football field running full contact drills. It probably just gets them in shape for hockey. We make a reservation for “Birthday” dinner before our late afternoon break and hurry back to get out of a very chilly wind.
Dinner tonight is at “Fid” which is the word for some sort of shipbuilding tool. One of our sources listed this in the top three restaurants in Canada, and other sources don’t mention it at all. Apparently it is just a matter of taste. The place is tiny with not more than forty seats and two waiters who are tag teaming the five tables that are occupied. Mary has a roast chicken served with Gnocchi and a fantastic sauce, and John has elk on squash pureed with citrus and ginger. The ginger-citrus combination blows away everything else on John’s plate so the dish doesn’t really work all that well, while Mary’s is perfect. Just a matter of taste.
The wind has settled down a bit as we hike back to our hotel, have a birthday nightcap at the bar and catch the Presidential debate. McCain did OK and so did “that one.”
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