Canada Ports Of Call: Halifax & St. John's Bay

You can read about our adventures in NYC here ß

And about our time aboard the Norwegian Gem here ß

Our first two ports of call were both in Canada:  Halifax & St. John’s Bay.

We booked a hop on/hop off bus in Halifax thinking it would be an easy way to tour the city as we didn’t have anything particular we wanted to see.  I had read in our NCL Freestyle Daily that Halifax was known for their breweries.  Sign me up! 

At every port, my first stop was coffee.  I was dying for a good iced coffee the entire trip (and only in a few ports did I spot a Starbucks).  We boarded the pink double decker bus and our tour guide pointed us in the direction of some coffee saying if we didn’t catch that bus, there would be another within 15-minutes behind us.  She would have been a really fun tour guide so I am sad we ended up missing that bus.  She gave me a recommendation of a nearby brewery close to the ship that I planned to hit up before we left.

The double decker busses were the old English style and didn’t have open tops so it you couldn’t see everything but sitting up top was still fun.  We rode the bus until we got to the highest point of Halifax, the Citadel.  Kenyon suggested getting off there because 1) it was all downhill and 2) we wouldn’t have to waste time riding the bus back up if we did want to stop later.  So, we toured the Citadel.  It was basically this old military bunker and they had actors playing out the changing of the guard.  It was really cool.  We also looked around the gift shop and military museum.

 

We boarded the bus again and rode it most of the way back down the hill before deciding to get out and walk.  We had heard on the bus tour about the big explosion many years ago, which happed at 9:04 am.  There is a church with the clock that always shows 9:04 am.   

We stumbled across some food shacks, one of which, Cows, was rumored to have the best ice cream in all of Canada.  And it was really good!  We also tried a Doner, which is apparently a popular Canada food.  It is basically a gyro but is made with a special sauce known in Canada.  It was tasty.

We made our way back towards the ship and stopped to rest in the hammock along the pier.  Then, we stopped into Garrison Brewing for a beer sampling (for me, Kenyon doesn’t drink).

Our second Canada port of call was St. John’s Bay.  We had decided to book the trolly ‘round St. John’s tour instead of the hop on/hop off bus tour.  This was fun in that the trolley was cute but not so fun as it was really hard to see anything out of the trolley windows. And, the seats were pretty uncomfortable after a while.  This tour was designed to give you a tour of the city and then drop you off in the town square, which was about a 5-10 minute walk back to the shop.

The town is known for a local artist that made these amazing wooden sculptures that were all over town.  The tour guide said he died recently but his family makes sure they are kept up.  They were amazing.

 

I made sure to stop into Tim Horton, a popular Canada coffee shop, where I had some very yummy iced coffee.  It was nice to get out and stretch our legs but we didn’t stay in town for long. 

Up next, back in the USA…