(For more photos, see my Nova Scotia Pinterest Board and John’s photo journals.)

Halifax is just over an hour’s flight from Montreal. We arrived on a balmy Saturday evening to find the Tall Ships in town. After a stroll along the waterfront, we ate Thai in a lovely little restaurant called Gingergrass just a few doors from where we were staying, the Waverley Inn. This is a place of Victorian charm, built in 1866 and a hotel since as long ago as 1876, but still very comfortable.

The next morning, we set off to walk around town and were just in time to catch the changing of the guard at Government House.

This was only the first bit of Scottish culture we encountered. At the Citadel, there was a lot more. Nova Scotia is obviously a whole lot more Scottish than we are back home! I wasn’t sure if I wanted to visit the Citadel – I’m not really interested in army history – but because there was so much live action I enjoyed it.

We found a great place for lunch – the Wooden Monkey, very near the Citadel and specialising in organic food, humane meat, gluten free and vegan dishes. I had a delicious chickpea salad, and the beer was good too. (So far, we’ve tried beer from three Halifax breweries – Alexander Keith, Propeller and Garrison – including blonde, amber and IPA – what a brilliant place to stay!)

Afer lunch, we did some more strolling and ended up in the Public Gardens, which, according to the guide book, are considered to be the finest Victorian city gardens in North America. I can believe that – they were just beautiful, and as an added bonus there was a band playing because it was Sunday afternoon.

After that, it was back down to the Waterfront to look at more Tall Ships before heading back to the Inn for a rest before dinner – pizza at Piatto with more beer and a free dessert because our pizzas were ready at different times. Thanks guys!

On Monday, we drove down the coast to Peggy’s Cove, a lovely little fishing village with a much photographed lighthouse:

For dinner, we returned to the Wooden Monkey because we liked it so much the first time. And that is the end of our brief stay in Halifax. We’ll have one more night here at the very end before we fly home, but for now we’re off to Annapolis Royal.