We visited Lunenberg today, a place that has a lot of really old homes as well as others that they’ve painted bright colors (example above).  The trim on this is lavender and it has has a blue door, but I think they’re not quite done with the painting yet. We’re two too-tired tourists, so the place didn’t enthrall us quite like it could, given Dave’s aversion to gift shops.  There’s quite a few of these here.

But, if you had energy, a fresh take on things, the well-kept houses provide a narrative of sorts for a small Canadian fishing village.  We took in an art exhibit at a local gallery (there are LOTS of those–another reason to enjoy the place) which detailed the life of one old fisherman, and his life on the sea.  They did without a lot of comforts, both out on the boat and (certainly) at home, and he lost a lot of shipmates and good friends to the vagaries of the weather, tides and storms.

Here are some of the sights, in bright sunshine!

Another fishing village we saw lots of colorful houses was Burano Italy.  There is was said the women painted their houses bright colors to entice the men to return home.  I don’t think they’d say the same thing about Canadian men.

This is a map of Lunenburg, which is about twenty times larger than Peggy’s Cove, about 50 times larger than Mahone Bay and about a billion times larger than Prospect.  But I might be exaggerating a bit on that last one.

I like the dots atop this one.

This house is on a lot of touristy brochures, I’m sure for its bluey-periwinkle color.  Did I mention that Dave has an aversion to gift shops?  That’s one of the main activities here.  I actually went in one, looked around, decided that a) I couldn’t carry the item home in the suitcase, or b) I didn’t want another thing cluttering up my house at home that I’d eventually have to get rid of.  As a result of Dave’s aversion and my lack of enthusiasm, our souvenir shopping was limited to a grand total of $161 dollars for the whole trip.  Even Dave was amazed.  That’s why you have to wade through so many photographs–that’s about all we brought home.

Down on the harborfront, there were a series of brightly painted red clapboard buildings, which I really liked.

This bookstore–Elizabeth’s Books–also had the same color treatment.

We stopped for lunch into a tiny place that was seemingly run by cheerful teenagers, and had a quick, but delicious lunch.  This was not it, but we did like the flowers. After that we walked up to the St. John’s Anglican Church, which had been rebuilt after being partially destroyed by fire.  It was a hot muggy day, so we were glad to enter to cool church.

The exterior

The last quirky thing we notice was this curvy doorway over the main door and two side windows.  We saw this repeated in several different houses.

Mahone Bay, the next town, is know for its three (although we counted four) churches.  One of them is this striking example, with the phrase “Holiness to the Lord,” written out underneath the main stained-glass window.

They also had several gift shops that sold quilts–a delight to see.

This is the view of Mahone Bay (est.1754) from across the bay.  Nearly all these churches are on the same small street.

We’d pretty well exhausted all the things to do in both Lunenburg and Mahone Bay, so we headed back to Halifax to enjoy our last afternoon. First stop, the cemetery where the Titanic victims were buried.  We arrived at the same time as another tour bus, the tour guides all dressed in blue kilts (women).

Loved this ode to this particular Englishman.

I wanted to see two sets of graves in Halifax: the one from the Titanic (victims who were not taken to their hometowns for burial) and the ones from Halifax’s great explosion in December 1917.  This is one row of the former; the latter only had a “group” memorial plaque of the unknown victims, with no individual graves.

At the time I didn’t know where the rest were buried–thinking it was probably their own little church cemeteries.  However, after arriving home I found out about the Explosion Memorial in a local park.  Like any good tourist, I have to say I missed a few sights, but was really chagrined to have missed that one.

We decided to cross over one of the bridges to the other side of Halifax–an area called Dartmouth.  This is a view of the little dressed-up tugboat in front of the Halifax Harbor.  Notice the giant cruise ship (white, on left).  We’re glad we dodged them at Peggy’s Cove today.  About all we can say about Dartmouth is that it is an “Oakland” to Halifax’s “San Francisco,” in other words, we hardly got out of our car and zipped back over another bridge back to Halifax.  As usual, we’ve skimmed the surface and we know it.

I loved the giant flags–hanging up for Canada Day?  Or there all the time?

It’s too early to go to dinner, so we relax for a while in the Public Gardens, kitty-corner from the Citadel.

As soon as we walked in, I could smell the fragrance of lilacs.  For some reason (maybe too much for too long) I will admit to a certain amount of Tourist Crabbiness.  The fragrance began to help set me on the road to being cheerful again.  Maybe it’s because I’d been one too many days without chocolate or been one too many days on the road?  Who knows?  But being out in  Nature set it back right.

Navy Memorial Plantings

And we saw three different wedding parties taking photos in the gardens, this Saturday afternoon, distinguishable by the bridesmaids’ outfits.

As we walked by (after the kiss), I heard one bridesmaid tell the bride “Your butt really looks good in that dress.”

Ah, yes.  I’m sure that’s what the bride will always remember about this day.

We take a few minutes to sit on a bench: Dave’s reading his book and I write in my travel journal, which I can never seem to keep up with (regretfully).  We decide that FID restaurant is probably open now, and head over there.

This photo is from the restaurant’s website, and that long pointy thing to the left of the fireplace, up on the back of the checked wall is a fid–a rope-making tool for sailors.

After finishing our feast (the first time in Canada we went bonkers over the food), we headed back to our Faux B&B.  We wanted to pay with a different credit card that charged less for international charges, but the owner had already gone ahead and charged the one I used to secure the lodging.  This left us shaking our heads why he would do this, but then that’s how we felt about a lot of the stay there.  We packed and crashed–early start tomorrow.