evan

I've been dawdling and delaying writing about our trip to wt:Halifax (Nova Scotia) two weeks ago for some reason, but I'm bound and determined to get some info down on, uh, electrons about it right now.

We flew out of Trudeau airport eeeeearly on a Friday morning; I'd shopped a bit on the Air Canada site and got $99 each-way tickets from Montreal on their wp:Air Canada Tango program, but they required that we be on the 7:50AM flight. Air Canada used to be one of my favorite airlines, but they have been getting continuously disproportionately high prices and conversely worse amenities (pillows and blankets now cost extra, thank you very much). Discount flights in Canada are pretty sparse these days, with the collapse of Jetsgo in 2005 and the recent repositioning of CanJet for charters only. So, you just have to take what you can get.

The flight to Halifax was quick and painless; Amita June slept most of the way there. The airport there is pretty small (yay small airports), so we buzzed through baggage claim. Cabs into town were a pricey flat-fee of $52, which got our hackles up, so instead we waited half an hour and took the Airporter shuttle ($16/person) into Halifax proper. We got to see a lot of the Nova Scotia countryside from the shuttle -- lots of leaves turning and conifer forests.

We had reservations at the pretty and historic Lord Nelson Hotel, well away from the waterfront, but still in the downtown area, near Dalhousie University. The Lord Nelson is in the "Splurge" section of Halifax hotels on Wikitravel, but since this trip was for my birthday and our 2nd wedding anniversary I thought it'd be nice to stay there for one of the 4 nights we were in town. But when I called to make a reservation, I was able to get a very competitive rate, mostly due to a healthy 40% CAA discount, and I booked us for all 4 nights.

I'd asked for early check-in, but our room wasn't ready at noon, so we tried the Lord Nelson Pub for lunch and a beer. The food was tasty and the atmosphere was, uh, pubby. We pawed through the stack of tourist-info documentation that we'd picked up at the info desk at the airport, then went up to our big and well-lit room for a mid-afternoon nap. Yes, all three of us.

When we woke up, Maj and Amita June went for a walk across the street to the pretty wp:Halifax Public Gardens. It's a very nice Victorian-era public park with disturbingly large geese roaming about. When they got back, the three of us headed down to the waterfront for an early dinner. Halifax's streets are very steep -- they virtually plummet into the water. But we walked straight down to Water Street then meandered along looking at the sights.

Our intention was to eat at the Privateer's Warehouse, a building with a bar and two restaurants stacked on top of each other. It's part of the Historic Properties on Upper Water Street, a collection of restored buildings with shopping and food. But the Warehouse turned out to be too rambunctious for us on a Friday night, so we instead went around the corner to Salty's for a slightly more sedate meal on the water. We had good food; Maj had some very nice crab cakes and I took on a large seafood salad. Amita June chomped on really tasty fish and chips.

The walk back up the hill was a bit tough, so we stopped in the Rogue's Roost brewpub on the way home for a little strengthener. Unfortunately, as it was after 8:30PM, the baby wasn't allowed into the pub. So, we had to leave her tied to a parking meter while we had a... just kidding. We retired to bed after a long day, all three.