Halifax, Friday, 2-Jun-2023
After our red-eye flight, we landed in Halifax and spent our first day getting our room and walking around the waterfront. We also made it to the Halifax Public Garden.
True to form, we didn't sleep much on the overnight flight, but between quick periods of sleep and a bunch of dozing, we were able to rest enough to last the day. The plane was relatively quiet, other than an unhappy dog for a few minutes about halfway through the flight.
The flight path was pretty interesting. After leaving Vancouver, we started going south past Idaho and almost made it down to Wyoming. We then made a straight line toward Nova Scotia. By the time we got close to Lake Superior, the sun was rising.
After landing in Halifax, we grabbed a quick breakfast, then went to get our rental car. We managed to find our hotel, and fortunately, they had a room ready, even though we arrived before check-in time.
We settled into the room, did some quick device charging, then walked down to the waterfront for lunch. Both the seafood chowder and smoked salmon salad were great. We then walked across the way to grab some ice cream from Cows. Many of the flavors had "cow" or "moo" in the name, so I ended up asking what several of them were, settling on Cownadian Maple, which was maple ice cream with bits of maple cookies.
Since we were right there, we walked along the Waterfront Boardwalk, heading south. There were many places to sit, including colorful Adirondack chairs, benches, and even hammocks. We got to the south end of the boardwalk, almost to where the Farmers' Market is on the weekends. We were also not far from the Canadian Museum of Immigration which we planned to visit on another day. We turned around and headed north, stopping near the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic to look at the HMCS Sackville, Canada's oldest warship (it was closed so we could only look from the dock).
Next, we walked up the hill to the Halifax Public Gardens. There were a lot of teens standing around looking like they were ready to go to a prom. Most of them seemed to be clustered around the bandstand in the middle of the garden. There were also a lot of them near the bridges which crossed a small pond to take pictures. They didn't seem to flinch when we walked by their groups to also take a look at the bridges. On the way out, we admired the huge iron gates (we entered at the other corner).
On the way back to our room, we stopped by a grocery store to get things for dinner and some snacks; our room comes with free breakfast, so we figured we would check that out to see if we wanted to buy supplemental items.
Back to the room where we relaxed, had dinner, and did some planning and journaling. The weather will impact what we do; before we arrived, it was in the 90s, while on our first day, it was in the 60s. The next couple of days will be in the low 50s with rain. We do have one outdoor-ish activity we want to do, so we'll try to pick the day with less rain for that.
