Clay and I
were up too early and went for a walk in the dark along the waterfront
boardwalk. We bundled up as if for a cold rain, when it wasn’t raining. It
turned out we were so hot that we both were stripping off layers and I changed
from a sweater to a knit top when we got back. It was a long walk in the dark
to get there and the boardwalk was only about a block and half or 2 blocks
long. We hoped to see a sunrise, but got back to the hotel before it happened.
We stopped in Baddeck at the Highwheeler Café and bought cookies for our
picnic lunch today. We have had some Oat Cakes here in the Canadian Maritimes. I had one as a cookie at
Anglo Rustico on PEI. We had some triangles in a bread basket at Le Gabriel’s
dinner in Cheticamp that Judy and I thought tasted similar to the Oat Cake
cookies. (Mom & Clay hadn't chosen the Oat Cake that day.) Today in the Highwheeler we saw squares that looked the same (and tasted
similar again) that were labeled Cape Breton Oat Cakes. We got a small bag of
those and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I will let you Google this for your own recipe if interested. Frankly a disturbing number of the recipes contained shortening or lard, but many contained butter. Still they were probably much less heathy than they tasted and we all enjoyed a lot of them!
Breakfast was
at 7:30am today. We had a menu to order from with full wait service! The menu had 4 choices. They were continental, petit (1
egg), pancakes, or grande (2 eggs). The last 3 came with bacon or sausage. We
all had eggs, either petit or grande and we all got burnt toast. Oh well. It
wasn’t a cold buffet!
The bus
departed a few minutes late. We drove about an hour and a half to get to the
Fortress of Louisbourg. It was reconstructed in the 1960’s and is set today at 1744.
The morning started out windy and it started raining just after we reloaded the
bus at 1:15pm, so that was lucky. We started with a park ranger and a talk and a
guided walk. We saw a small herd of sheep in the fort eating grass first thing.
Charming! All that had been missing from a lot of these landscapes were sheep.
The rest was just all of us freely wandering the streets of the Fortress and
entering the buildings that were open and interesting to us. We went into maybe
half the buildings, but like our guide said about 4 or 5 of them were
storehouses and if you only enter the stone one on the corner that she
recommended as the best of them, you could skip the rest. It was interesting
and each building was not necessarily a reproduction inside but many of them were museum displays on
different aspects of life at the time with a scattering of archaeological
artifacts from the site.
It was very
windy and the sea was just roiling off shore with lots of sea spray flying high
from the rolling breakers. It was a bleak scene. We saw lots of places to sit
and eat but there was too much wind and blowing dirt. I picked a barn that was
open air but not so the wind was coming through. It had nothing of interest to really
see, so us sitting in there on the wooden platform didn’t impede other
tourists. We all had a place to sit and we were out of the wind. It was fine.
Then the long ride back. It poured rain. Just before we got back to Baddeck it
started clearing.
We still took
the bus all the way back to Gisele’s to drop our day bags before our 3.5 free
hours in Baddeck. As the sunshine returned, we visited a number of shops, but I
think only Judy made a purchase. Clay bought a 6-pack for himself and Judy and
some crackers at the food Co-op. We took Mom & Judy to see the boardwalk and
see the statue of Alexander Graham Bell and his wife Mabel sitting on a bench
across from their home. As we were walking along in daylight discussing if
these Bras d’Or lakes were like Scottish lochs and could be freshwater or
saltwater or both, we spotted crabs and blue starfish. Definitely saltwater or at least brackish.
We got back
and had the crackers and beer before dinner. Dinner was in Gisele’s restaurant
at 6:30pm. It began with salad. Mom & I had chicken supreme. It was good but weird. It was a
very fruity tasting chicken breast. It had prunes stuffed inside and a fruit sauce
with not only cranberries but some other berries. I am sticking with they were huckleberries. I
ate it. Judy and Clay both had a sole
roulade and they both said it was good and they ate it all. Overall, I would
say that we all thought this was closer to the caliber of food and service we
had expected in our Caravan dining experiences and it didn’t come until day 7.
Dessert was weird too, but not bad. It was something chilled in a footed glass
bowl with whipped cream and a pineapple slice atop it with a white creamy sauce
and a red sauce both poured over it into the bowl. You couldn’t see what formed
the base under all this. I asked the waitress as she was handing them out and
she scowled at me and said "It’s bread pudding. It’s delicious. Eat it." We ate
it and I don’t think anyone thought it was delicious or bread pudding, though clearly
it was bread pudding under there. Just the raisins and the strawberry sauce
competed with the pineapple slice and the cinnamon sprinkled over the whole
thing didn’t help. It was just weird, but not really bad. We all went to our
rooms after that because tomorrow is an early morning and long travel day again.
Breakfast is at 6:30am. Judy and I both plan to have pancakes. Bags out at 6:30am too. Bus departs at 7:30am and we were reminded how critical it is to leave on time. We should have a midmorning stop at Truro. I don’t know why but I do know this is one of the tidal bore spots on the Bay of Fundy. So, maybe. Nope, I just checked the Bore Arrival table I picked up in Halifax and on 10/9 it is at 3:32am and 3:50pm, so we’ll miss that. We’ll go to Peggy’s Cove in the afternoon. No idea what is happening at lunch time, so we’ll be prepared with leftover protein bars and random snacks. Just in case.
We spend the next 2 nights at the Marriott Harbourfront in Halifax. Marty warned us before we left the bus today that we would bid Barrie, our driver, farewell tomorrow upon our arrival in Halifax. The next time we’ll be driven is with some shuttle company to the airport. We will say our farewells to Marty the next night at our last included dinner in Halifax. Marty also warned us that we’d have a group photo made tomorrow at some point. Well, good night for now. Back tomorrow.
Photos
