Tuesday July 27th

As promised, here is a quick account of our last couple of days in Nova Scotia. It is all a little out of whack seeing as we are already in New York, but this way we can give an overall report on our three days here after we leave on Thursday morning and return to Toronto.
After our wonderful Puffin tour, we travelled to Baddeck on the huge Bras d'Or Lake, which was a beautiful spot - very picturesque and even though it is quite touristy, it was not at all unpleasant, as you can see:

Just one night in Baddeck and off to Halifax, retracing some of the highway we had driven on to get to Cape Breton Island. Arrived in Halifax city just in time to get caught up in the traffic mayhem of the Gay Pride procession through the city streets. For unwary travellers who were not at all familiar with the place, it seemed that every way we went to try and escape the traffic jams got us even more deeply entrenched. Finally managed to get down to the waterfront area after the parade had passed by and very pleasant it was too! Had an explore, then a late lunch come tea in a very nice Portugese restaurant and tracked down our bed and breakfast place.
Next day dawned cloudily ominous, but with hope in our hearts we set off early along the south coast for Peggy's Cove, hoping to beat the tourist buses, as this is one of the most-visited fishing villages and lighthouses in Canada. Arrived at about 9.15 and immediately discovered why it is so popular - the most beautiful and well-preserved wooden buildings making up this tiny village perch atop a stunning area of huge granite boulders called 'erratics', remnants left 10,000 years ago by receeding glaciers.

The lighthousewhich no longer operates, sits on the edge of the granite shoreline and dominates the landscape. About 50 residents still live here, earning their living from the sea and no doubt now supplemented by the odd tourist dollar.

As we walked back down the hill to where the car was parked, the rain which had been threatening became a reality, so we were a bit lucky - had managed a lovely walk around before both the rain and the tourist hordes arrived (funny how you always think of yourself as some special type of tourist when you are travelling!). If you put these two photos together, you get some notion of the view across Peggy's Cove from the road in:

From here we decided to take the much longer coastal route to Lunenburg, another much larger historic fishing community and we were so glad that we had, despite the rain. We drove in and out of so many beautiful sheltered villages with lovely old houses and shanties, white sand beaches and bays with rugged shorelines and innumerable islands that we were just amazed. This certainly provided the pictures of Nova Scotia that we had imagined!

We passed through Mahone Bay, another historic seacoast town and what a collection of magnificent old wooden houses and churches, then continued on our way to Lunenburg. Here is the view across Mahone Bay to the town with its three wooden churches:

 

By the time we reached Lunenburg the rain was more persistent and the pesky tourists had arrived in their droves - coachloads of them! We drove around the town, which is the South Shore's largest historic fishing village and certainly had plenty of brightly painted old buildings, but the number of people everywhere, the rain and the very 'touristy ' feel of the place made us decide that Mahone Bay was much more our sort of place and below are a couple of the absolutely gorgeous houses the town was full of:

Off we then drove the short distance back there for a walk around, a remarkably good coffee and our usual picnic lunch at the harbour. Luckily, the rain stopped while we were doing all of these things, so we were even more impressed with the place. From here we took the faster highway route back to Halifax, whereupon the rain started yet again and to add insult to injury, it became very foggy. Never mind, we thought - off to New York in the morning and the forecast for there was fantastic!