Halifax Good Eats

 

Vegetable paella a "small" single serving that could have served 3. The last time I had paella was in 2019 in  Barcelona.  It was terrible!  This was very good but just too much to eat in one sitting. Dan had a steak sandwich. A Spanish restaurant on the waterfront - pricey for lunch.

Dinner location away from waterfront. From the reviews it sounded like a place locals frequented and it was.

It was in a house dating from 1834, once belonging to William Henry, the Father of Confederation, and a judge on Canada Supreme Court. 

First a salad then seafood stew for me.  Dan had shepherd's pie. No photo of dessert - sticky toffee pudding.  Everything was so yummy.

The Wired Monk was our favorite breakfast stop. Bagel, egg, cheese, tomato, bacon and chilpotle mayo.  We also stopped in for an afternoon tea/coffee and snack. We never ate at the hotel.

We didn't try poutine on this trip.

The Bicycle Thief was a very popular spot on the waterfront.  Recommended by our taxi driver when we arrived Tuesday evening. We stopped by Wednesday afternoon to make a reservation for that evening and nothing was available until 9:30.  Check for Thursday night and same story.  Thursday we stopped just before noon and were seated quickly.  Restaurant filled after we arrived and got very noisy.

Dan had salad and shrimp [above] and I had salad and a lobster roll.

Overall I can't say it was as stunning as it was hyped to us.

Dinner Thursday was a small restaurant close to the hotel on the waterfront: Pier Pub. There's another restaurant attached to it: Chianti.  We'd seen the menu online but were first seated in the more formal dining room.  When we opened the menu we thought we'd come to the wrong place.  Nope we just needed to move to the pub side.

Dan had the best Caesar salad he's had and I had roasted vegetables and arugula salad.  We shared fish and chips which was wonderful. Oops - photo missed.

Dessert again no photos was lemon cheese cake and after dinner drinks.

My beer glass gave us a good laugh.

Birdfeeder Traffic

 

This hummingbird has taken possession of the feeder and chases all others away.

FROST!

 Temperatures dropped into the 20s overnight last night which meant frost this morning.

The bleeding heart got the worst of it.

Look how it looked before in my header and below on Sunday.

Now - I don't know whether I should trim it back or not. Tom, what do you advise?

In other news, the white iris that Vicki Lane sent me last year has buds.

I imagine I find other casualties of the frost as I work in the garden later today.

Halifax

 Why did we select Halifax to visit in May you may wonder?  

1. We had United credits from 2020 when we planned a visit to the Grand Tetons but had to cancel because of Covid.

2. In 2023 that United credit would only fly us as far as Halifax because of inflation.

3. We wanted to visit a nice small town and not be dependent upon a car to see the sights.

4. Friends recommended Halifax as a nice city to visit.

Our flight was out of Boston Logan airport and the best way to get there was to leave the driving to Dartmouth Coach service.  It was almost a 3 hour trip.  We left home at noon on Tuesday the 9th, caught the bus at 1:00, arrived at the airport at 3:40, got through security using TSA precheck for the first time (what a breeze that was), had an early dinner, boarded the plane at 5:30 for 6:05 departure, lost an hour because Halifax is one hour ahead, and arrived at the airport at 8:30.  But the airport is a half hour from town so we had a cab ride to our hotel -The Westin Nova Scotian - arriving sometime after 9:00.

Now go back to the map above showing the driving time between Boston and Halifax.  If we didn't have that United credit it would have made more sense to drive and see more sights on the way instead of the insides of airports and airplanes. But we needed to use the credit so that decided it for us.

The Westin Nova Scotian is one of three historic hotels in Halifax.  Built in 1930 in seaport district it was one of the first  Canadian National Railway hotels built across Canada.

Below the building to the right of the portico is the train station and there's an entrance to the hotel in that station.  

Our room on the 5th floor looked down on the station.

Being in a corner room we would also look out to the harbor.  Here it is a dawn.

The town is quite walkable and the waterfront board walk is lovely.  Here's my attempt at a panorama photo.

We are happy we made the trip and experienced Halifax.

More to share in another post.  Stay tuned.