The signs were in the air on Monday, when I was walking around Quebec city trying to keep warm and avoid the rain. As my last train, The Ocean, trekked across Quebec, New Brunswick and into Nova Scotia, it still didn’t look good. I was about the have some bad weather.
The Ocean wasn’t quite the experience The Canadian was. To start with I had to share my seat overnight. This did not make for comfortable sleeping and subsequently I was awake every 20 minutes. As the passenger numbers dwindled I was able to claim two seats, just in time to doze a little in the early morning.
Heading into Nova Scotia the landscape became so green. The trees, shrubs and grass were rich with colour. A beautiful sight. The servers in the dining car were the highlight though. After visiting for breakfast, by the time I returned for lunch I had a nickname. “Here comes our little sweet pea,” greeted Bruce and the boys. They were fun.
After no luck with my CouchRequests I had posted in the Halifax CS forum and had lots of offers. My host is Anj, a very passionate CSer and a former CS ambassador. Her house was walking distance from the train station. I was initially staying two nights and the third in the hostel to reach the shuttle to the airport. But Anj‘s place was just as close so I stayed for three.
I crashed early on Tuesday night and slept in on Wednesday. It was raining (no surprise there) so I spent a few hours running errands before meeting Sarah, another CSer.
Sarah couldn’t host me but offered to meet up. I met her at her favourite area, Hydrostone, and walked around. Sarah’s enthusiasm for the area, and Halifax, was infectious. It really is a pretty place and I got a few history lessons at the same time. The rain either stopped or limited itself to a drizzle while we walked around. We grabbed some dinner in the city before I left to meet two of Anj‘s friends at the Museum of Natural History to check out an exhibition showing some great film costumes: Batman, Indiana Jones etc. There was a lot of Star Wars and Star Trek: meh.
Despite my best efforts to get moving earlier, it was still lunchtime before I set out on Thursday. The rain had eased – which wasn’t expected – so I set out on foot to explore the harbour. Halifax is a big port town: a base for the Canadian Navy, a port of call for cruise ships and home to lots of fishing boats. Of course there is the Titanic connection: many of the rescue boats sent when the Titanic sunk were from Halifax.
For the details of my really awesome Thursday night read this.
