Much of the day this muggy Friday, August 6th, will be spent preparing for the next leg of our Maritimes ’60th birthday celebration’ journey. Yes, VanRamblings will engage in the prosaic tasks of doing laundry, packing our bags, purchasing a bus ticket on Acadian Bus Lines, retrieving our bags from Howe Hall in the afternoon and lugging them to the bus depot (we’d take a taxi, but we’re cheap), finding a place for breakfast and a very late lunch (seems that the dining hall closed, as of Thursday afternoon), and bidding Halifax a fond farewell. We may even find some time in the course of our day to take the Dartmouth ferry, and do a bit of sightseeing.
VanRamblings has enjoyed the first part of our journey which, much to the chagrin of some of our closer correspondents, has proved to be a particularly laid back introduction to our Maritime summer vacation. You see, we’ve traveled to Halifax many times previously, so haven’t necessarily felt the need this time around to do the expected ‘touristy thing’. We’ve simply sat back and observed (this is what comes from possessing an undergraduate degree in sociology; who knows, there may be a monograph arising from all that we experience ‘observing’, as we are embraced by our Maritime hosts).

Continue reading Day 4, Maritimes Vacation: Making Our Way to Annapolis Royal →

VanRamblings decided to play tourist on our first full day in Halifax.
Wearing our waterproof jacket, we headed up leafy Coburg Road for the 15-minute stroll to Spring Garden Road, and downtown Halifax. We did some window shopping, took in the Public Garden, wandered the streets (along with a myriad other ‘tourists’), and at 4 p.m. headed over to the Empire Park Lane theatre for a screening of Christopher Nolan’s Inception.
Following the screening of Inception (suffice to say that we were not enthralled), VanRamblings sauntered down to the Halifax waterfront …

Continue reading Halifax on a rainy day in early August, as the day progresses →

On VanRamblings’ first full day in Halifax, we awoke to a Maritimes torrential downpour. We took one look outside, and decided to head to the dining hall for breakfast, first fortifying ourselves with a glass of fresh-
squeezed orange juice and a warming cup of Dalhousie Fair Trade organic hot java (don’t you just love universities for being socially progressive?).
Upon entering the dining hall, we were greeted by a sea of young faces, mostly young women whose native language is French, and who are residing at Dalhousie as part of a cross Canada cultural exchange programme. Otherwise, there are families, visiting professors, and people such as ourselves who appreciate a ‘good deal’. Breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs, baked ham, French toast and all the fixings, fresh fruit, croissants and bagels, various coffees and a variety of fresh juices. We had a bit of everything (all for $7.50!), this being our main meal of the day.
Over the years, VanRamblings has found, when traveling, that the best accommodation (and food) deals may be found at universities across the globe. For our stay in Halifax, at Howe Hall, we are paying the august sum of $43 a night, tax included. For this we get a relatively spacious dorm room (with en suite sink and vanity, and the requisite room ‘storage’), Internet access, an on site dining hall, fresh bedding and towels daily, coin-operated laundry facilities, and a central location with ready access to downtown Halifax, involving a pleasant 15-minute stroll from the university campus to Spring Garden Road, the main street of downtown Halifax.
For a future vacation, VanRamblings is looking to travel to Montreal, where we’ll stay at McGill university. A dorm room at Royal Victoria College goes for as little as $25 a night. An RVC dorm room looks pretty deluxe.
VanRamblings will spend this Wednesday decompressing from life in the big city, reading, exploring Halifax (even if it is raining), and may even catch a movie or two, at either the Empire Park Lane or Oxford theatre, or both.

The first day of VanRamblings’ journey back east proved to be a long one.

As has been the case for many years, dating back to our enrolment in Grade One (oh so many years ago), VanRamblings has never been able to sleep the morning before a ‘big event’, and such proved to be the case Tuesday, August 3rd. No sleep, just more packing, and preparation of our humble Co-op abode for the coming onslaught of ‘the plumbers’.
Yes, VanRamblings spent the wee morning hours boxing everything in our kitchen and bathroom, because bright and early this Tuesday morning Cambridge Plumbing arrived at the Co-op to commence with a massive re-piping of the entire Co-op, an event which VanRamblings (thankfully) will miss most of, as we find ourselves in vacation mode in the Maritimes.
VanRamblings also busied ourselves in the early morning hours purchasing medical and travel insurance online. Yes, VanRamblings loves nothing better than leaving things to the last minute. We finally decided on a great $48 dollar package from Pacific Blue Cross, but (unfortunately) not before we’d purchased medical insurance from BCAA … oh well.
So, there we were at 6 a.m. on the #9 Broadway bus heading towards the Canada Line, ready to jump on the Airport line. VanRamblings’ progressive lefty friends may not appreciate the Canada Line (it’s a jobs thing, don’tcha know), but VanRamblings believes in a multi-faceted approach to transportation infrastructure — Community Shuttle buses, West Coast Express, Skytrain, streetcars and rail, as well as electric, hydrogen and clean diesel buses — so we’re darned appreciative of the new Canada Line.
The plane boarded at 8:25 a.m. and lifted off on time for a Calgary hop at 9 a.m. Seems, though, that on the approach to Calgary, a passenger ‘spilled’, causing a half-hour layover in Cowtown, for cleaning. Thus, VanRamblings and fellow passengers found ourselves behind schedule for the 7:28 p.m. Atlantic Daylight time Halifax (we arrived at 8:02 p.m. ADT).
The remainder of the journey east was relatively uneventful, as VanRamblings watched Atom Egoyan’s latest, Chloe, a rather inert Fatal Attraction knockoff, sans bunny.
Next thing VanRamblings knew, we were on the approach to the Halifax Stanfield Airport …

More tomorrow, on the life and times of VanRamblings in the Maritimes.