When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
In total, we put about 1400 miles on the rental car. As a friend told me, getting from place to place was always a drive and there's nothing but forest and coastline between. As we were driving, we'd see a little dot for a town. Literally, it was 4 houses on the road, a cross street and if lucky, maybe a gas station. On Google maps, some didn't even have the city limits outlined.
Things we did: Stayed 2 nights at the Train Station Inn and did some exploring around Northumberland. Crossed the Confederation Bridge on our way to Cavendish and Anne of Green Gables (Cindy was a little disappointed - the house/museum isn't where anything was filmed and is the "house" in the story. A nearby recreation is indicative of the author and where she lived.). We then went to the Inn at Bay Fortune (far East coast) - run by Jeff Smith who was there this week. It's a little boutique hotel, and it does a farm to table dinner plus local oysters. You tour the farm and get all the background. Apparently in the US, no one knows him, but, he's like the Emeril or Bobby Flay of Canada. The food was pretty unique with a lot of fresh ingredients and unusual things. We also spent the days exploring the region.
Then the Ferry back to NS and 3 days in Harbourville. We had plenty of seafood and some wine tastings. Cindy needed a day off to catchup, so I golfed in nearby Berwick Heights (shot a decent 44/44 with rental clubs and my sneakers). Then we met an ex-coworker for breakfast near Digby, drove around to Shelburne, and finally two nights in Lunenberg.
There, we stopped at Peggy's Cove for mandatory "most photographed lighthouse in Canada", did a horse drawn tour of Lunenberg, then a 2 hour sailing in the area. Lastly, the Bluenose II came into port after dinner. So I got to get some pics of it will four sails up and it came in, plus some shots once docked. Also got a few hundred shots of about 20 other lighthouses we stopped at along the way, some of which are open and are climbable.
Did you by any chance see this memorial to the crew and passengers of Swissair flight 111 that crashed off Peggy's Cove in 1998? This reminded me in many ways of the Vietham War Memorial in DC. (click to enlarge) This was one of the unexpected sites we discovered in our Nova Scotia trip in 2007.
We've been planning a trip to Cuba for this summer, we were last there in 2022. We didn't take a vacation last year so we desperately need one now. We hope to be there in July, we love the hot weather and the ocean water is really warm in summer.
You must have heard by now.... you may have company from Russia.
When we are there we see a lot of Russians who vacation in Cuba, they tend to be the ones who complain the most about food and drink, lol. Cuba made a deal with the devil decades ago over the sugar industry and trading diesel fuel, then Russia stopped buying sugar and less diesel going to Cuba to use for the generation of electricity.
A number of foreign government representatives claim to have been injured while working in foreign embassies in Cuba, they claim the injuries were caused by concentrated energy weapons, if that is true it could only be done by Russian sources in Cuba. A number of Canadians have been injured working at the Canadian embassy in Havana.