One of the added joys is that we also get to visit people we never thought we'd see again. Our ex-Tokyo neighbour, Kathy is one of those people and the instigator and cause of this month's travels. Kathy lives in the capital of Nova Scotia, Halifax, a tidy and historic coastal port in a climatic zone known as The Maritimes on the East Coast of Canada. She invited, nay demanded our presence there as soon as she learned we moved to Yorkshire and were within a 9 hour journey. SETTING OFF The availability of international travel solutions from Northern England is a little inconsistent, one could say its seasonal. We normally try to fly out of Leeds Bradford Airport which is about 25 minutes out of Wetherby but lots of cities are not served from there and those that are, often are summer destinations. So it is that we can end up leaving from Manchester about a two hour tedious drive away.
We usually drive to a nice hotel, stay overnight and they look after the car until we return. This choice takes us past Halifax U.K. just outside of Leeds hence the title of this blog entry on our trip to Halifax N.S.. CANADA Our first stop was the Lester B Pearson airport,(short man dark suit, sadly demised) Toronto where we picked up a rental car and drove into Yorkville. These Canadian place names seem very familiar to us Yorkshire folk..
Just a side note, ever noticed how car rental sites always exit into the busiest, most complex part of the city road network? It's enough of a jet-lagged stress-fest anytime but when you are well practiced at driving on the Left side of the road, sitting on the right side of the vehicle, the right turns, the where's the rear view mirror, and the reaching for the gear shifter all take on another scale. I'd like to say we are getting used to it but Gail still refuses the first drive. Or is it that I'm too macho to let her....dunno. We had 
a great evening meal in a little restaurant courtyard which overlooked a swank eatery/bar where all the beautiful people in town for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) were pretending to eat/drink and have a good time.... Quite a lot of hard bodied, lifted and stretched skin on display. 
I enjoyed watching the open top Ferrari, Bently, Escalade and Mercedes drive pasts and the wonderfully unfelt hugs and greetings shown by this rare breed of quasi talented but well connected humanoid. 
Toronto is a huge city and our evening walk covered just a small section of this older part with it's lovely timbered shops and boutiques as well as the modern university grounds (with it's wild herds of roaming black squirrels.). 
Yorkville midtown also is home to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) 
and the Bata Shoe museum one of which we spent half a day in later. NIAGARA FALLS AND NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE. It is just not sensible to visit Toronto without taking the day trip to Niagara Falls. Some Canadian colleagues of Gail's also suggested it was equally silly not to stay overnight in the old town of Niagara on the Lake. Being eminently sane, we did both. We took nearly two hours to follow the satellite-nave towards the Falls and then find where the Helicopter tour was.
If there was ever a helicopter flight you should do, the one over the river, whirlpool and falls is a must do. Puts everything into scale and really makes the day out special. I know that Niagara Falls is known to boast some of the worlds most tacky tourist streets but they are well contained and generally serve the tourist family's needs. Every Canadian we met was friendly and helpful and not very tacky at all. 
The weather was a delight and I did have my misgivings about the Niagara Falls experience being naff, especially when it means becoming one of hundreds of plastic wrapped blue jelly babies, obediently queuing, having the obligatory green-screen tourist photo taken and all the other palaver. But really, the experience of being on the "Maid of the Mist" was a genuine highlight. The sight and the force of falling water, the proximity to that sheer volume of spray, the ability to be as naff as you liked, grinning stupidly like everyone else and memories of incredible vividness will remain with us forever.
We managed to find a quiet little Italian restaurant for a late lunch before heading off to our B&B, Britaly in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a totally wonderful experience where we were made to feel so welcome. Run by two merry expats, one English, Graham, and one Italian, Aldo. http://www.britaly.com/ They run a beautiful home half of which and all the back patio/garden are for the sole use of guests. It is set in a suburban back street and is a well presented home I can strongly recommend to you if you are ever up that way. 
Niagara-O-T-L is a beautiful old town with glorious lake side views, old clap-board buildings and a lovely town centre, I think the oldest in Canada, and now in the middle of the grape region. Surprise surprise, we happened to land there at the start of their wine festival... Ice wine (sweet but complex) is a local speciality. 
While we did behave ourselves there was significant shopping done, furry animal patting and quite a lot of walking/driving around and sightseeing, We stayed a second night at a five star hotel before returning to Toronto. TORONTO REVISITED On leaving NOTL and before heading off to NYC the next morning we had come to an agreement to spend our last day in Toronto at either that R.O.M. or the BATA shoe museum. We had a good time at the ROM and an evening meal at the top of the CN Tower. We went to The ROM after a long cafe breakfast, took a guided tour of their ancient Greek art world, watched a show on ocean pornography, and marvelled at dinosaurs and Egyptian mummies. As far as Museums go it does put on a great display. Then it was off to dinner. I know every large city has a revolving restaurant and they by-and-large are all best avoided but our experience at the CN tower was not typical.
Despite having to be electronically sniffed in a smart walkthru cupboard to gain entry, it was a superb night out. 
Great wine, good food, excellent service and spectacular scenery. As well as wonderful company. NEW YORK CITY. It was only a short flight the next morning to J.F.Kennedy airport (short man, dark suit, sadly demised) and a reasonably smooth shuttle bus connection for a transfer into the city. It was Gail's first visit and as she has reciprocal club rights with City Tattersals in Sydney she got us into the New York Athletic Club www.nyac.org/ with a lovely room for four nights. It is on 59th and 7th.
That puts it right on the south end of Central Park, just up from the Plaza Hotel and almost next to Micky Mantle's sports bar/cafe. We had such a great New York tourist experience. There is a real buzz to the place anyway and we happened to be there when all the G20 countries reps and leaders had flown into town in huge planes and driven around in massive stretch limo's and discussing how to be greener and less wasteful. 
So it was that an intense security presence was everywhere. The streets around the UN building, the swank hotels and all city blocks around were full with black dark windowed Limos, armoured vans and cop cars creating grid-lock everywhere. We didn't see any famous faces despite being right where W Clinton and B Obama and K Rudd were at the time. We did see thousands of police. We walked all of Mid town, shopped at Macy's and Bloomingdales, 
spent the night watching Tosca in Times Square, 
took the Circle Line cruise around the island, 
went to the Guggenheim. I am still a huge fan of Frank Lloyd Wright, so even though the Guggenheim was celebrating it's anniversary and showing nothing but Kandinsky works, I thoroughly enjoyed walking through the building and looking in a side gallery at the collected masters Including Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Bacon Van Gogh, etc etc,,,, , then we shopped, 
walked through central park, 
went up the Empire State building , 
lunched in the Oyster Bar in Grand central station with some VIPs,(Gail was in her element with Maine lobster and champagne), rode the subways and buses. 
patted Police horses, 
hailed a bike taxi, ate hotdogs from a road stall, 
marvelled at the Statue of Liberty, 
breakfasted in a traditional diner, shopped, 
lunched in Greenwich Village, did some shopping, 
ate lunch in a new york deli and went to a Broadway show, 
saw where the Twin Towers aren't and watched the Naked Cowboy campaigning in Times Square. He is a strange NYC mayoral candidate whose slogan was "Never has one promised so much with so little" and we generally filled our days with as much activity as my aching feet would allow. While New York tempted with many more treasures and experiences, we had a firm appointment in Halifax and so could not delay our departure lest we leave Kathy standing waiting eternally playing her sudoku machine at Robert L. Stanfield airport (short man, dark suit, sadly demised. A worrying trend, I recommend not wearing dark suits at airports ) HALIFAX NOVA SCOTIA It was a delight to be met by Kathy and 20 years seemed to vanish in a minute. She had arranged for a cab to be waiting and took us directly back to the guest suite in her apartment building. This was fantastic,our own big room, nearly in the centre of town
and just opposite a beautiful park where we walked and had an ice cream while Kathy prepared a fantastic meal for us that evening. 
Next day was a guided walking tour of the town including a pause to hear the 1pm canon and the changing of the guards at the citadel fortress 
http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/ns/halifax/index.aspx and then a rainy walk to the foreshore for shopping and lunch. Saturday was Market day and the girls revelled in wandering through the maze of stalls and shops that is the Saturday Halifax market day. Although quickly bored by such carry-on I will admit to seeing some wonderful produce and chatting to some great local artisans. After a small amount of my sulking and uninterested behaviour it was decided that we collect the rental car and do some local Halifax touring. +of+IMG_0871.JPG)
First stop, Point Pleasant Park, www.pointpleasantpark.ca/ +of+IMG_0881.JPG)
a short stroll really from Kathy's home but we parked on the harbour port, strolled the paths and explored the battlements before driving towards the York Redoubt battlements http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/lhn-nhs/ns/york/index.aspx +of+IMG_0880.JPG)
from where Kathy read us a historic record of a ship board entry into Halifax in the 1700's. Not I would say the most flattering of assesments but fair. We returned Kathy to her appartment for her beauty sleep and +of+IMG_0879.JPG)
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Gail and I walked into town for a drink by the harbour and a nice little return ferry ride across Halifax harbour to Dartmouth to get a view of Halifax from the water
. 
Sunday was the start of the Grand Circle Tour of southern Nova Scotia which Kathy had been planning for months. 
The First day we toured the East coast bays towards Bridgewater, 
we drove through beautiful Chester http://www.chesterns.com/ with it's lovely views and homes, along the peninsulas of Malone Bay 
and lunched over the Maritime Museum at Lunenburg where the Bluenose replica is moored. http://www.bluenose2.ns.ca/Legacy/HistoryoftheBluenose.html It is a faithful replica of the famous race winning sail ship named after the hardy Nova Scotian schooner sailors of the 1920's . Despite Kathy's encyclopaedic research into everything Nova Scotia I was unable to determine exactly why Nova Scotians are referred to as Bluenoses... It is either because they were cold weather sailors winning warm water sailing trophies, its just cold and your nose goes blue, or early seamen used cheaply dyed navy cloths to wipe their noses....these are all the theories I could find from reading tourist signs and folders however I saw not one blue nose other than the ship during our stay. After a short stroll through the galleries and streets of Lunenburg we headed off
to arrive just in time for our evening accommodation near Kejimkujik National park at a wonderful little challet in the woods next to the Mersey River lake http://www.merseyriverchalets.com/ in the centre of Nova Scotia. 
After a wonderful night and morning in these fantastic surrounds we headed off 
to Bear River for a special gallery called Flight of Fancy, www.theflight.ca/ , a visit to a not so welcoming Indian reservation Gallery 
and then on to Annapolis Royal (the old capital of Nova Scotia) www.annapolisroyal.com/ for lunch and a walk through the Royal Gardens and shopping/ barganning for pastries, breads and deli stuff at the famous and, as it turned out, enormous fun of the (East)German Bakery. You will see from the snaps and the web sites just how beautiful this part of the world is and I wonder why Nova Scotia does not feature on more tourist routes, I think it is a matter of the Bluenoses' self depricating attitude and a lack of promotional dollars. Certainly there are world class tourist accommodations and activities to capture everyone's imagination. Perhaps two and a half days was far too short to do justice to the ground we covered as there are temptations to loiter in every view point, town and village. That night, after a satelite-nave directed drive over some rather good dirt roads we arrived to stay in a fantastic beach house right next to the harbour at Harbourville 
looking onto the Bay of Fundy 
(Highest tidal range on earth) http://www.harbourville.ednet.ns.ca/index.html . 
What a fantastic evening, champagne and all the wonderful products from the German Bakery. 
Next morning we were greeted at breakfast by a curious fur seal swimming by bobbing its head up and having repeated staring competitions with us. You can see why we were entranced by the place. 
That day was really the start of our return to Halifax but we went via the beautiful Halls Harbour http://www.hallsharbour.org/ 
and the rugged and torn Scots bay and Cape Split, this is the home to the Micmak indians and is litterd with semi precious stones and jagged seascapes. At Cape Split there is a famous hike up the headland , about an 8 mile adventure. On the left side there are beaches and windswept fields on the right there are cliffs and ruggedness and all the way you can hear the ocean from both sides. Sound Idylic? Consider the following Hiking notes...farmers may not always appreciate you walking on their property despite the path being clearly marked, the cliff walk is subject to and has been known to collapse without warning, oh , and from September, always wear high visibility gear to ensure the deer and bear hunters don't shoot you.... So, a nice walk it would seem. The drive home took us through Port Williams, a comfortably large town and into Grand Pre` http://www.grandprewines.ns.ca/TheEstate.htm where a super lunch was had at the winery there, one glass each only. Then it was one last supper at Kathy's place and an early departure the next morn after a wonderful reminiscent breakfast with Kathy and a fond farewell as we left the comfort and welcome with good feelings about this part of Canada's east coast. The trip home was Halifax/Toronto/Manchester/Wetherby and involved far too much waiting at airports, but that is such a small price to pay for what was a truely wonderful holiday. In October we are recovering, but towards the end of the month our old old old mate Alice, now teaching in Istanbul, is visiting for a week so I'll be able to have some news for next month too. See you then, then
