Halifax, Saturday, 3-Jun-2023 — Fujimoto Potpourri

Since we knew the day would be rainy, we went to the Canadian Museum of Immigration, then had lunch at the nearby Farmers' Market. We then walked through the Halifax Central Library, then took it easy for the rest of the day.

For the first night in a time zone four hours ahead of Seattle, we slept pretty well. We went down to check out the breakfast buffet, which turned out to be quite well-stocked.

We figured it would be best to not do too much for our first full day. We also wanted to not do too much outside other than walking to and from places.

Canadian Museum of Immigration

The first stop was the Canadian Museum of Immigration. It's at Pier 21 which used to be an immigration facility from 1928 to 1971.

We started on the lower floor, which had a couple of special exhibits. One was by a Chinese artist about her family's experience immigrating to Canada. The other was about the people who lived on the Chignecto Isthmus, which is between Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Next, we went upstairs and started to look through the exhibit about the history of Pier 21. We stopped partway through the exhibit to watch a film in which immigrants told their stories. Not long after the movie finished, we went to find the tour of the Pier 21 exhibit. There were a lot of people waiting, but all for the English tour. The group was so large that another person came up so they could split the group into two.

Part of the tour was a hallway next to the pier itself where immigrants walked into the facility. Docked at the pier was a huge, empty cruise ship, meaning the passengers were probably wandering around Halifax.

After our tour, we went to the other side of the floor to look at the exhibit about Canadian Immigration. We spent quite a bit of time on an interactive map where you could look at where immigrants came from throughout history.

Having gone through the museum, we got ready to brave the rain again to get lunch.

Bell from second parish church of Beaubassins

Model of immigrants coming through Pier 21

Assembly hall

Model of the RMS Ascania

Farmers' Market

Not far away was the Farmers' Market, which was supposed to have prepared food in addition to what you would find at a market. We found something from a woman selling Italian food and started looking for a table. They were all taken, but one had a couple who weren't eating but seemed to be making plans. We asked if we could join them, and they said yes. As it ends up, they were passengers on the cruise ship we saw by the museum. Their 14-day cruise started in Iceland, and they said they were disappointed that for some reason they needed to skip Greenland.

Library

After we were done with lunch, we went to the Halifax Central Library. It has a series of stairways that crisscross between the mezzanines of the upper floors. We worked our way to the top floor but didn't go out onto the deck because of the rain. There was enough rain that we were still pretty wet by the time we left.

After we were done, we went back to the room, grabbed our laptops, and planned to go to a café. The one we were going to try ended up closing as we walked up, so we went back to the top floor of the library and went to the café there.

Having finished our snacks, we went to the grocery store to pick up some dessert, then had that back in the room after finishing the leftovers from the night before.