East Bound
This summer my grandpa’s curling team made it to the 55+ Canada Winter Games in Saint John, New Brunswick. What better excuse could there be to wander around Eastern Canada for a week?
It was a great start down by the water in Saint John when we found the east coast To The Moose mascot.
The moose was followed by a visit to the Reversing Falls, a place were the direction of the current visibly changes with the tide.
Our second day was spent in St. Andrews by the Sea, a small tourist town down in the south end of New Brunswick. You can throw a rock and hit Maine from the beach.
Day three was spent exploring the bay in some sea kayaks followed by a massive amount of ice cream.
Seeing as he was the reason for the trip, we had to take in one of my grandpa’s games. They won this game and finished 4th in the tournament.
Following the game, we headed for Halifax. Along the way we made a stop at Hopewell Rocks.
We pulled in to Halifax around 9:00 and found a bite to eat down by the harbour.
And found one of the many Irish pubs in Halifax called The Lower Deck where a local band, Shameless, was killing it.
Down the street from our Air B&B was Seven Bays Bouldering. Needless to say, this was the first thing we did the next morning. Here is my brother, Kevin, stretched out and trying hard.
Seven Bays had a great atmosphere with an attached cafe and awesome cinnamon buns and coffee. This is the kind of place I could spend a ton of time.
With numb fingers and full of cinnamon buns, we wandered up to Citadel Hill.
The 78th Highlanders still patrol the grounds and have periodic marching demonstrations. This may be an unpopular opinion, but the bagpipes aren’t half bad when played by someone who knows what they’re doing.
That evening, following beers at the Alexander Kieth’s Brewery, we went full-on tourist and took a “Harbour Hopper” tour.
That night we bar hopped around downtown. The fact that Halifax is second for most bars per capita (next to St. John’s, Newfoundland) made this extremely easy.
The next morning we went tidal bore rafting and mud sliding. For the tidal rafting, picture surfing and whitewater rafting combined. And for the mud sliding, well it speaks for itself. If you ever find yourself in Nova Scotia, I very strongly suggest you try it out.
Following rafting, we had to nerd out a bit and check out the Halifax City Library.
For our final morning out east, we decided to hang out by the water before returning to the mountains. Living in a landlocked city, we definitely make sure to spend as much time as possible near the ocean whenever we can.
That ends our short trip to the east. A follow up trip is definitely in the future.