Severance Travels: Halifax, Nova Scotia

On Monday, August 13^th, traveled all of about 70 miles to get to our CG just outside Halifax! Got here around noon and got set up – nice open site, and, right next door to the laundry so we got everything clean!

You can see Halifax on this map - lower coastline just to the left of center.

Tuesday we drove into Halifax to the downtown and harbor area. We had heard about a tour ride called the “Harbor Hopper” and everyone said it was the thing to take to get an overview of the city. As the name implies, we did a tour to the harbor (and also the city!). If you have ever ridden the ‘duck’ boats in Branson, you know what I mean.

We got there around noon but the next available tour was not until 2:45 so we had some time. They have a great Maritime Museum that has a lot of history about the Halifax port. We were met by this parrot.

Cabling across the Atlantic to Europe was big stuff here back in the early 1900’s. When the colonies decided to break away from the British, this became an important port for them.

And, when the Titanic sunk, a number of the ‘cabling ships’ here were called out to rescue the survivors and the dead. One whole section of the museum is dedicated to that event. There is a cemetery in town that has a number of the ships passengers buried here. Very sobering.

After the museum, we still had some time so we got some lunch along the harbor (fish and chips), sat on the docks, and ate. Met a nice elderly lady who was from Montreal but had moved to Truro after her husband passed away. She was in town for a DR visit.

Our Harbor Hopper took us all around town and into the harbor.

We then drove up the street to the Citadel which was a fort erected back in the 1800’s to protect the harbor and Halifax. Quite a place.

Here are some pics of the tour – both land and water.

This harbor is huge – it never freezes over so a lot of ships come in here. About 100 cruise ships visit here during the season. One was in port while we were here.

Changing of the guard.

On Wednesday we drove out to a small town about 20 miles from Halifax to visit with some friends that used to go to our church in Plano. They left in 1997, are now retired and spend 6 months up here and 6 months in Florida. They have a beautiful house on the Atlantic coastline.

We had a great time remembering – we brought the RLC anniversary photo book with us so they could find pictures of those that they used to know. It was a great afternoon. Kay made some excellent fish/shrimp stew for lunch.