Destination Daydreams: Maritime Canada

The Grand Tour. Le Grand Tour. The Epic Magical Round The World Adventure.

... is nearly a year away. Oh, the sadness. Oh, the impatience. I'd love to be off gallivanting right now, but in the mean time, I have a solution to this.

Welcome to Destination Daydreams in which I plan to babble inanely about all of the lovely things I plan to do on the Grand Tour.

I thought I'd kick this off with some of the places I want to visit in the various provinces of Maritime Canada, the first planned stop on the Canadian leg of the trip. Here goes.


I figure it might run something like this: I'll take a flight from Reykjavik (Iceland being my first port of call) into Halfiax, Nova Scotia. I think I'll spend a few days there relaxing and exploring the city and then head off down the coast to Lunenburg to gawp at the pretties. The Old Town of Lunenburg is a World Heritage site and full of beautiful old buildings. Looks quite Scandinavian to me, but apparently it's old British. I've found a bus company that seems to go round the southern end of Nova Scotia, so I could use them to hippity hop between towns around the coast, all the while soaking up the awesome. I figure then I can take a boat trip or similar on the Bay of Fundy, snap way too many photos of the tidal bore and cliffs. The Bay is known for having the highest tidal range in the world. So I've got to see that. Apparently you can go rafting on the tidal bore too, which looks pretty damn cool. According to the ever (un)reliable Wikipedia, there's a Mi'kmaq legend that the tides are caused by a giant whale splashing about. Sounds interesting. Will have to look into more of these tales - I love these sort of myths.

After that, I'd have to find a way to visit the Joggins Fossil Cliffs. Even if it means taking a taxi - there's no public transport to Joggins. The closest you can get by bus or train is Amherst which is a half hour drive away. The Cliffs are a World Heritage site on the Bay of Fundy, known (obviously) for fossils. I like fossils. I used to have a bucket full of ammonite fossils we picked up off the beach in Charmouth... Anyhoo, I'd love to see this place. 300 million year old fossils. Sounds good to me.

Or maybe I'll first go from Halifax to Cape Breton National Park up in the northern tip of the province and spend a day or two up there admiring the scenery (and, as ever, taking too many photos). The whole area looks gorgeous and I figure it'd be a nice place to wander around for a bit and get away from the towns a while. There's also the Acadian settlement of Cheticamp and I'd love to know more about Acadia and its history.


From there I can head to Sydney to catch a ferry over to Newfoundland and spend a few days out there - I'd love to go and see St Johns, plus I hear it's good for whales and icebergs. What a wonderful idea.

Getting around Newfoundland looks a bit difficult if you don't drive (which I don't), but I'm sure I could find a way round that. There's a bus service between Port Aux Basques in the west and St John's in the east - it just takes about 13 1/2 hours. Hmm... Maybe if I took the ferry to the port closer to St Johns and based myself solely out of there instead of covering the whole island. It would be cool though.

Newfoundland partially covered, I'd head back the way I came into Nova Scotia and then hop on the Via Rail trains to carry on into New Brunswick. I hadn't originally planned to stop in New Brunswick but a quick look is changing my mind - it looks like a lovely area and I feel like I'll be wanting to see some more of the Acadian culture of the Maritimes by the time I get there. So maybe I'll give myself a few days there too.

That would let me a large part of the Maritimes - Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and New Brunswick. It does miss out Prince Edward Island, which I could possibly fit in but would potentially mean rushing throught things and likewise with Labrador. Much as I'd love to visit every part of the Maritime region, I'm not going to rush myself just to say I've got the set.

But I would really love the set...

No worries. This is still a year away. Plenty of time to adjust plans and come up with new ideas. Maybe I'll decide I don't fancy some of my planned destinations as much as I think I do and then I'll have more time for the Maritimes. Maybe.

Alternatively, maybe I'll just want to spend longer everywhere and the year will have to be stretched a bit... umm...