Moving from the North Coast to the South Coast of Nova Scotia

Sunday, May 13, 2018--Middleton to Halifax (Via Lunenburg, Mahone Bay, Chester, and Peggy's Cove)

It was a long day of driving and exploring.  After breakfast, we headed toward the southern coast of Nova Scotia.  Our first stop was Lunenburg--probably the prettiest and most historic town in the province.  It was founded following the British style of layout--a rectangular grid with a central park.  Homes in the Georgian and Cape Cod styles, among others, were built along with impressive churches.  The residents, originally brought here to be farmers had found the land too rocky for successful farming, so they moved to the coast and became fishermen and then boat builders.  The town was the original capital of Nova Scotia, but probably was saved to remain a historic site due to the capital being moved to Halifax.  The blocks filled with the beautiful old houses and the old shops remained as they were rather than being replaced by newer, larger ones.  As a result, Lunenburg is a World Heritage Site today visited by many people. 

It was just the first of several towns listed as among the most beautiful in Nova Scotia that we visited as we worked our way along the southern coast toward Halifax.  Next came Mahone Bay, a smaller, newer town, but set on a beautiful bay and filled with nice homes.  Then came Chester which was even smaller but also in a scenic setting with nice homes. 

Our final stop isn't considered to be a beautiful town probably because it only has about 47 residents, but it is probably the top tourist site in all of Nova Scotia.  It was Peggy's Cove, a fishing village known for its lighthouse on a rocky outcrop of land and the small, colorful fishermen's cottages scattered in the area around it. 

After stopping in each of those places to walk and see what there was to see while taking photos, we headed to Halifax where we checked into an AIRBNB apartment we have rented for 2 nights--Your Home Away from Home.  Since it was a Sunday and the apartment is only 3 miles from downtown Halifax, we drove there and parked.  Then we spent almost two hours walking up and down the streets seeing the various styles of architecture and visiting Dalhousie University and the Public Gardens.  Although the Halifax metropolitan area is only about the size of the Corpus Christi one (about 450,000 inhabitants), the city seems much bigger.  That's mainly because downtown is filled with tall apartment buildings and with housing for students at two universities.  It's an impressive place with some nice modern architecture, some older buildings, and lots of construction sites where even newer buildings are going up. 

For the evening, we picked up a pizza and returned to the apartment.  We watched a Netflix film for the first time on my computer with it connected to the TV via an HDMI cable.  The film was fine, but it was a bit nerve-wracking to watch--about a compulsive gambler who just would not accept that he was a loser and had no interest in changing his ways.