Da missus and me are planning a trip to Nova Scotia in mid July. The general plan is to take an autoferry from Maine to Yarmouth, spend a night there, do a night in Halifax, head for Cape Breton and turn the Caddy loose on the Cabot Trail for a few days, follow the Evangeline Trail back to Yarmouth and ferry back to Maine.
Has anyone tried the new high-speed catamaran ferry? It’s billed as a 3-4 hour crossing, as opposed to an overnight on the Scotia Prince. Any comments?
Anyone have any particular “must see/do” kinda things? We’ve never been there before, so any recommendations would be appreciated.
Also, what are the pros and cons of using a US credit card in Canada? Is the exchange favorable, or am I better off loading up with $CDN at a bank after I cross the border? How about ATM cards? Do I get the bank’s rate, or do I get jobbed on withdrawals?
I strongly recommend Fort Louisburg. The 17c fort is restored, and the town around the fort is recreated. Visiting, one can’t help but feel that they are stepping back in time.
Shelborne(sp?) village in Nova Scotia is cool. It is a 19c town on display with some craft shops, such as a furniture maker. The guides are people from the modern town adjacent to the historic section, so they tell detailed histories of the occupants of the old town.
Electropolis, the studio where LEXX was filmed (don’t know if it’s open to the public, but it might be). Actually, the LEXX Uncon will be held in Halifax July 19th through the 21st. The Shoe is a bar there where the cast and crew have been known to hang out.
The citadel is a great place to wander about and pose for pictures at.
I haven’t been there since I was 10, so don’t hold me to any details, but there is a hill, I think they called it “Magnetic Hill”…if you’re on the right road, you’ll see some signs about it and then you’ll see some cars stopped or doing weird things in the road and slowing down traffic.
The deal is: if you go to the bottom of the hill, put car in neutral and let off on brake, it will roll uphill backwards a significant ways.
Magnetic Hill is in Moncton. New Brunswick, not Nova Scotia - although it’s less than an hour from the NB/NS border. It is a cute thing to do if you’ve got the time.
The only thing in Nova Scotia that I’ve done that I can recommend is a tour of the Grohman knife factory in Pictou.
And stay away from a town called Oxford. It’s home to the slowest drivers on the planet. I swear, these people get in their cars with no intention to actually get anywhere.
Peggy’s Cove, tourist trap but if you’re gonna be in NS, ya haveta go.
I love walking through Point Pleasant Park in Halifax. Bring a picnic lunch and spend a quiet couple of hours there.
From an exchange standpoint, credit cards are good for convienience, you will get the exchange rate. If you’re gonna use cash, do the bank thing like you said. Pretty much all places will take the USD but you’ll get screwed on the exchange.
The Cabot Trail is awesome and Cape Breton has some really nice bed & breakfasts.
July is a great time of year to be there. sigh Sometimes I really miss Halifax.
Anyway slight hijack
Does anyone know if the Seahorse Tavern is still open on Barrington Street?
let us know how your trip was when you get back, K?
I’ve just been here a couple of years and am getting to know the place myself. A couple of standard day trips from Halifax are Peggy’s Cove and Lunenburg. They are within an hour and a half from Halifax and are a good place to go if you just want to hang out and relax. Peggy’s Cove is a “quaint” fishing village with some crafty stores (not as hokey as it sounds) and lots of nice rocks. Lunenburg is a UNESCO world heritage site, it is the place where the Bluenose was built (the famous sailboat on our dime), a nice place to go to walk around and have a coffee. Of course Halifax has some nice places to tour also, I recommend taking a tour-bus around the city, it is only about an hour long and gives an interesting history and overview, or the “Harbour-hopper” which drives around the city then sails around the harbour.
The tidal bore where you can go white-water rafting is near Truro (which you’ll probably be driving by to get to Cape Breton) if you want to do the rafting, you will of course have to find out in advance when you can go due to the tides.
I second Fort Louisburg, it is in Cape Breton. Aparently there is a very nicely built English-style playhouse (like the one from Shakespere in love) that puts on some pretty good shows at this town also. In Sydney, there is also supposed to be a really interesting coal miners museum where you go down a mine shaft.
I would also recommend taking a day to tour Prince Edward Island. It is a pleasant little island with lots of nice red sand beaches and a couple of white-sand ones too. The north of the center part of the island is where Cavendish is (the home of Ann of Green Gables) where tons of tourists go, but the rest of the island is pretty laid back. The capitol city is Charolttetown, the home of Canadian confederation and is quite pretty. You can either take a bridge to the island or ferry. They won’t charge for you to enter the island, but it is $50 to leave I think.
Instead of staying in hotels, you can often find nice little seaside cottages for the night.
If you have the time, the whale watching tour that runs out of Peggy’s Cove by the Saunders Family is a hoot! For “big city” fun, take in the Casino in Halifax. My many visits to Nova Scotia ALWAYS includes a tour of the Alexander Keith Brewery. Fun, Historical and entertaining. If you are lucky enoguh to have friends or relatives there, perhaps you can take in a kitchen party or a lobster bash. (Lots of fun, food, music and a little bit of drinking!) Other than that, just enjoy the scenery and local culture at every opportunity! Damn! Let me call the wife and see if we can go to Nova Scotia next month…
I second Balduran’s recommendation of a day trip to Prince Edward Island, if you can fit it in. I especially enjoyed a place called the Great Island Adventure Park in Cavendish; it’s not an amusement park, it’s got a train to follow that leads you through an adventure game and you keep score according to instructions along the trail. It’s lots of fun.
One more suggestion: (depending, of course, on how much time you can spend on this trip) If you have any desire to ever, in the future, visit Newfoundland and Labrador, do it now. The only reasonably-priced access to that province is the ferry at the tip of Nova Scotia. If later in your life you want to see Newfoundland but don’t really feel a need to revisit Nova Scotia, you’ll be doing a lot of driving you’d rather not be doing.
