Day 7--Halifax

(I'm not skipping Day 6, it's just being delayed to go with Day 8.)

We decided there was so much to do in Halifax that we wanted to devote an entire day to it, instead of just the evening we'd originally planned.  That, and we had some extra time due to the Newfoundland thing. . .

After driving into town, the first place we stopped was the Citadel.

With its historic artillery,

impressive costumes (even if the actors are bored, lol),

and commanding views of the city and the harbor
.

After we left there, it was well past lunch time, so we headed down to the waterfront.  After all, we were in Halifax, so we felt we MUST try some seafood.  It was a gorgeous day, so we ate outside and then wandered down the waterfront.

  

 We visited a couple of museums, including the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, where we saw many interesting, impressive, sometimes disturbing things.

One of them was a deck chair off the Titanic:

 After the museums all closed around five or six, we headed back to the hotel to rest up. We were really looking forward to enjoying the Halifax nightlife we'd heard so much about!

 Boy, were we ever disappointed!  We got back downtown around 7:30, only to find out that most businesses closed at around eight!  This includes pubs, music venues, and many of the restaurants!!!  Not to mention tourist attractions, of course!  Granted it was a weeknight, but GEEZ!  Eight o'clock?  You've got to be kidding.  This was worse than PEI!

We managed to find a restaurant that was open until (gasp !) ten, and were quite lucky to do so, as we were starving by then.  Afterwards, we headed back to the car, since everything else seemed closed.  We took a few night shots along the way:

(You can just see me sitting between the 1 and the 2.)

As we got to the car, we heard faint strains of music.  Interested to see what was open at this ungodly hour (of 8:30 or so) , we followed the sound to a bar that was still open!  We spent a very fun and  pleasant hour or two at a place called the Lower Deck.  A live band (Signal Hill) was performing covers to a standing-room-only crowd.  And no wonder, since it was the only place open.  (Don't get me wrong, the band was really good, but I can't believe it didn't have something to do with the hour.)

At least we got some sleep, if only due to the enforced early night, as we were planning to get up at dawn the next day.

Day 4 and 5 - Quebec, New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia, and NOT Newfoundland

The next day we drove through the Eastern edge of New Brunswick, on our way to Prince Edward Island.  This morning was the last time we were dry during the rest of our trip.  Starting about noon, it rained, and rained and rained!

 

We did stop at one of the many covered bridges along the way,

  

more beautiful scenery,

and, of course, different moose warning signs.  :)

Way too late, well after dark, we crossed the Confederation Bridge into the province of Prince Edward Island.  Then we spent another hour and a half wandering around on back roads in the dark thanks to our guidebook giving us the wrong address to our lodgings for the night.  Fun, fun, fun.

In our cottage, we stayed up even later discovering that we'd missed by ONE DAY the ferry we'd planned to take to Labrador/Newfoundland.  This meant, that unless we did nothing but drive the rest of our trip, we didn't have time to go that far.  It was upsetting, but we comforted ourselves by making a firm plan to fly there next summer.  One way or another, we WILL see it!

On the morning of Day Five, we woke much too early to check out of our cottage and check out our location.  Our first daylit view of PEI was the red cliffs of Cavendish Beach.

We went on to get our infamous fox pics

and then drove into Charlottetown to see Confederation Hall.

Before leaving the island, we had to see the famous PEI buffalo herd:

We left after dark, taking a ferry to Nova Scotia.

3rd Day of Our Trip

 After a bit more sightseeing the next morning, we left Quebec City about noon.  The scenery, though impressive, was not too different from what we'd seen the previous day, though we did get closer to real mountains than we've been in a long time.

 In mid-afternoon we passed  a small, insular town that reminded us of David and Harmony, two werewolves from one of our recent games.  There seemed to be two cops for every person, though that wasn't hard to do, and we felt very out of place there.  (Please pardon the slightly blurred photo, as it was taken from the car.)  :)

Here's a shot of "downtown."  Very quaint, very quiet.

We did get some great pictures of fall foliage there,

  

 as well as some interesting cloud shots.

The most beautiful scenery we saw that day, however, was  toward the end of the day, at the edge of Bic National Park. We seriously considered camping there for the night, but it was starting to rain.  Setting up camp in the dark or the rain is no fun, and setting it up in both is just miserable, so we passed.  I wonder if we'll always regret it, though.

Instead, we spent the night in Rimouski, Quebec and enjoyed all the comforts of city life.  :)

Updates, on Kai and on Life

Now that everything but the waiting is over on our Canadian citizenship test, I can get back to my regularly scheduled life, including blogging.  Mind you, it took a call to our MP to get it done, but I don't really want to go into the horribly inefficient, if not incompetent, process it was.  Results, of a sort, will take anywhere from one to three months, so it looks like we'll be here at least into January, if not March, just what we've been trying to avoid.

Kai's cyst turned out to be benign, thank the Goddess.  Of course, he is now in the second phase of stitching on it, seeing as the wound opened up the afternoon after we got the stitches out the first time.  This time, they're leaving them in longer.

Samhain was an even quieter-than-usual affair this year, largely due to the aforementioned stitches.  We have to keep him fairly calm until they come out (again), so we couldn't afford repeated knocks at the door, which would have been too exciting for him, crate or no.  So we hid in the back part of the house and did only a quiet little ritual.

On a related note, this is the first year we've celebrated New Year's Day on November 1st.  We decided to do it for a variety of reasons, but it was definitely odd being the only ones around us doing it.  Not to mention that there was no snow on the ground and no fairy lights around.  Unless of course you count the orange ones at the neighbor's house.  :)

I had a surprisingly wonderful time at Hammercon IV last weekend!  I had never gamed in public before, and I was majorly stressed about it, but it turned out to be great, even with a couple of GM problems.  Check out the Hammer Games website for news on Hammercon V in 2013, as well as to find games and fellow gamers in the GTA.

And finally, I CAN NOT BELIEVE OBAMA WON!  I'm VERY happy about it, mind you, but I would have bet money it wouldn't happen.