We flew into Halifax, Nova Scotia on Tuesday 3^rd, over a week ago now.  (Lack of wifi for a while means we haven’t got to post anything for a while).

We had a very delayed flight from Montreal on a tiny little plane with only 80 seats and a twin prop engine.  It was surprisingly spacious with loads of leg room.  Which pleased Charlie has he had been moaning about not flying club class – god we’ve created a monster!! Although why he needs legroom I don’t know!

The views were incredible as we landed in Halifax – stretches of water and landscape just as we imagined it would be.  So beautiful I just don’t think we can rush away from this incredible part of the world without exploring it properly.

We got to our hotel and realised although we knew the ship bearing Frankie was delayed we hadn’t bothered to book an additional night or two at the hotel.  Sadly they were fully booked for the following 2 nights.  Whoops.

It seemed a shame as it was just on the waterfront with great views of the ships going in and out – John was delighted to have real life ‘ship watch’. The kid’s sofa bed however, was so uncomfortable that William cried and ended up in our bed meaning John had about 20 minutes sleep.

So we moved hotels to a brand-new ‘suite hotel’ up near the citadel a bit away from the waterfront.  We were the first people ever to have slept in our beds, which the kids were very excited about.

The weather was truly shocking.  Fog so bad you couldn’t see over the water to Dartmouth (weird how many places round here have British names).

We got Charlie a new bike (his little old hand me down one we had left at home deliberately). (The man who served us was from Liverpool).  So finally he has his very first ‘new’ bike.  Very cool and so ridiculously cheap compared with the UK.

Aside from chilling out we did visit a few places…..

Citadel Hill we could see from our hotel room and had heard the canon sounded at midday so thought we would just pop up there and have a very quick look round. We ended up spending half the day there. The present Citadel was completed in 1856 and is the fourth in a series of British forts on this site. Today, the restored Citadel is a national landmark, commemorating Halifax’s role as a key naval station in the British Empire and bringing history to life with it’s fantastic educational guide and so many brilliant interactive exhibits.  The kids loved it.

Murphy’s is where we headed for dinner on our first night – on Cable Wharf. Lots of information about the laying of the first cables between Northern America and Europe. Trying to explain to the kids that before the magic of Wi-Fi if they’d wanted to communicate with their friends on the other side of the Atlantic they would have had to send a letter, which would take 2 weeks to get there. Much hilarity about the excitement when the first telegram was sent and took a mere 17 hours to arrive – between Queen Victoria and President Buchanan in 1858.

Halifax has strong links with the Titanic disaster of 1912. 4 Canadian rescue ships were sent out of Halifax by White Star Line and brought back over 300 bodies – some of whom were buried at sea and others here in cemeteries. It appears to have had a profound effect on the town with memorials around town and a large exhibition here at the Museum of the Atlantic.

The other maritime event for which the town is known is the Halifax disaster in 1917. Here 2 naval ships that were about to make their way over to Europe to assist in the First World War collided in the port. The explosion caused the death of over 1600 Halifax residents.

On a more upbeat note we also discovered Cows Ice Cream “the best ice cream in Canada!” Completely delicious ice cream and some hilarious merchandising – ‘Angry Herds’ and ‘Duck Cowmander’ and ‘Mowcraft’ t-shirts etc.

Apart from the rather rubbish weather we passed a couple of nice days here while we waited anxiously for our ship to come in!!

(Loved these bike stations – pump and tools – just randomly placed around town!)