Peggy’s Cove and Halifax

Our wake-up call rang at 5 a.m. on Tuesday, September 14th.  We stepped out onto our balcony to watch as our ship began to pull toward the harbor at Halifax.  The sun was still on the other side of the planet but beginning to peek over the edge, which allowed me to peek back as the darkness began to fade away.

A bell donged from a buoy bobbing in the dark sea.  I quietly videoed some of these early morning hours.  At 7:30 a.m. we disembarked at Pier 21 and gentlemen guides in kilts waited for us near tour buses to take us to a place they called Peggy’s Cove.

As we sped through the countryside, our tour guide Allan Gordon told us that these rocks we saw all over the place were not placed in those positions by human hands.

We learned the area was carved by a glacier that left in its wake millions of rocks and rock formations, some smooth and some not.

At Peggy’s Cove, Mr. Gordon first showed us a granite wall that an artist named William deGarthe sculpted and dedicated to 32 fishermen and their wives and children, being watched over and enveloped by a guardian angel  (visible on the left).  It’s called Fisherman’s Monument.  The artist died in 1983.

These are the wood and wire cages that fishermen use to trap lobsters, which is their main occupation.

He said this is probably the most famous scene painted and photographed in all of Nova Scotia.  I contributed to its popularity.

Some of the village women were selling their goods, but we weren’t given too much time for shopping.

We couldn’t have had more pleasant weather.

Mr. Gordon told us a lot about lobsters but I wasn’t listening.  I was taking pictures.

There wasn’t a tree anywhere in sight.

I loved the sound of the bagpipes as it echoed through Peggy’s Cove.

As I said, there wasn’t a tree in sight.  The granite landscape was spread all around like it had been dumped from a gigantic cement truck and troweled by a shipload of drunken sailors.

Peggy’s Cove is a fishing village of 38 residents.  Our busload doubled its population.

None of our three men was interested in purchasing their own kilt.  (Because they were too scotch?)

Goodbye, Peggy’s Cove.  Nice to meet you.

Returning to Halifax, this cemetery is where many people from the Titanic are buried.  People of Nova Scotia retrieved their bodies, arranged for identifications, and many relatives chose to have them buried here, even though far from home.

We went back to our ship for lunch then walked into downtown Halifax.

This bridge connects Halifax to Dartmouth, a smaller town or village in Nova Scotia.

The city of Halifax was devastated by a huge detonation of wartime explosives in 1917 when two ships accidentally collided in the harbor.  Almost all the buildings and structures in Halifax were destroyed.  We could see by the unusual brick architecture just which old buildings survived or were repaired.

Allan and I were actually following a long boardwalk along the harbor (much like the boardwalk in Atlantic City, New Jersey) and it more or less ended here where I’m standing.

But we walked a little farther and found a casino.  Since we had two $5 Canadian bills in our pocket, we got rid of them here.  It was easy to do.  There were a lot of young people gambling here, maybe because there are six universities located in Halifax.

This old waterfront warehouse was turned into a restaurant.  We stopped to see the inside but didn’t think the menu was so great so kept going.

There might not have been any trees at Peggy’s Cove, but the rest of Nova Scotia is heavily wooded with maple, birch, spruce, and pine.  Several paper mills operate around the province.

This is our ship, the Norwegian Jewel, five years old, 13 floors high.  See Allan standing by it?

Here we are in one of the ship’s lounges, waiting for our name to be called for dinner.  Since I always tell the person with the camera to “make sure you get our feet, too,” John assists the photographer.

In addition to good service and attention, Mauricio showed us more napkin tricks.

Click here to find Quebec City.