A gorgeous Halifax day

 Today our bus picked us all up and took us downtown to the Atlantic Maritime Museum.  We didn’t have a tour guide today so we were on our own which was great.  The museum was very interesting… it was divided into different aspects of seafaring in and around Halifax. There was a section on the Navy, fishing, steamships, ship wrecks, and the Titanic.  There was also an explosion in Halifax in 1917 that was caused when two ships collided with one of them carrying explosives for the allies in WW1.  It decimated the waterfront with the power of a three kiloton nuclear bomb, killed 1600 people and displaced 25,000.  Many had been watching the ships from their windows and large numbers were blinded when the glass shattered from the blast. The whole city took them in and helped There was a really interesting display about that event, too.  

We saw this child’s grave yesterday.  He lost his life on the Titanic.  These shoes belonged to him.

If you watched the movie Titanic you saw that huge stairway in the central lobby. There was a piece of the newell post recovered with the bodies and that was in the museum as well. Here is a picture of what the stairway looked like and the piece that was recovered. While looking at the fragment you could easily imagine the Astors, and Guggenheims and others descending to mingle with others for music and cocktails and, later, running down that stairway to save their lives.

When we finished at the museum, it was a gorgeous day so we found a restaurant with outside seating for lunch.  I had a watermelon and blueberry salad and Steve had a haddock sandwich.  We enjoyed the people watching until it was time to walk to a local brewery, Alexander Keith’s Brewery.  It has been in production since the 1800s and is still located in the same old brick building.  Our group took a tour, and unlike most tours, we were given 30 oz of tastings!  They walked us through the process and showed us artifacts from the Keith family.  We then ended up in a cellar type of room where we had our final tasting and listened to the servers play some Scottish  music for us.  I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned yet that Nova Scotia means ‘New Scotland.’  There is a very heavy Scottish influence here. 

From there, we headed down to the pier for a ride on a three masted tall ship.  There were lots of other people on board which surprised us all a bit as I think we all thought it was a private cruise just for us.  It was fine though, and once the music started playing and the drinks started flowing, no one was bothered by all the people.  The sun was shining and it was wonderful being out on the water.  We passed some houses that were really huge, beautiful, pretentious, and crazy expensive.  We all started picking out the ones we wanted… Steve picked out a tree house he saw in one of the yards.  

That last picture is ONE house!  It was monstrous.  There were outbuildings and several docks that were all part of the compound.  

It was now 6:00 and time to head back to the rv park.  We were pooped and opted out of joining our friends for dinner out.  We certainly are sleeping well these days!  Tomorrow is a free day, so we’ll get some laundry done, do a little grocery shopping, and then maybe do a last bit of exploring.  The next day we will head to our next destination.