210920041206 Sydney, NS, Canada

Firstly, Happy Birthday Mum! I need to buy a phone card and actually wake up early enough to give you a call to say so in person! Hope you had a great day.

Also, congratulations Teresa on your engagement, seems like it's the season! If I win lotto any time soon I'll be there, hat and all!

I'll continue with the last couple of days of the tour, and then hopefully end up up to date with the Newfoundland Odyssey.

Day five started actually on time after saying sleepy goodbyes to Meg at the Halifax Backpackers Hostel (HBH). We picked up three new people - Phillip the Swiss German boy and Lu Yuen and Emilia the Singapore girls. The first stop (besides the obligatory Timmy's visit) was Peggy's Cove. It was not quite as stunning as it was when I went with Devin, Amy and Adele, but the clouds were quite atmospheric anyway. I got to take some pictures of things I hadn't seen the first time, and sent a postcard from the only working lighthouse/post office in the world (also the most photographed lighthouse in the world, apparently). After that we went to the memorial for Swiss Air flight 111 which went down off the coast in 1998. The site of the memorial was beautiful, but there were a lot of people taking pictures which took away from it a bit. We continued down towards Lunenburg via little coastal towns (including Goose Cove) and through some impressive fog. At some points you couldn't distinguish where the water finished and the fog began, which made for some interesting scenery when boats were on the water. We stopped for a little photo stop at Mahone's Bay which was a gorgeous little town with brightly painted houses, and then on to Lunenburg after getting lunch at the supermarket. Lunenburg is one of the two UNESCO rated towns in Canada (the other being Quebec City) and the home of the Bluenose (what was for a long time the fastest schooner in the world). I had actually expected it to be prettier, but it was lovely anyway and I went for a nice walk with Phillip looking at the memorials for various things. After Lunenburg we went down into Kedjimkujik (probably still spelt wrong) National Park and decided to go canoeing and kayaking even though it was persisting down rain. Ray and I got a canoe to share and everyone else was in single kayaks. It was wicked fun and we went traipsing up and down the river trying not to capsize. Didn't manage to see any wild beavers but you can't have everything! After semi drying off we went into Annapolis Royal and shopped for dinner. We were staying in a farmhouse all to ourselves which was fantastic. Most of us slept up in the attic with the cold and the spiders, but it was cosy nonetheless. Dinner was made without too much fuss (although I had to be a bit creative since there weren't enough large pots or anything to cook for so many people) and we had a fire, carved a pumpkin (want to do that again, it was fun) and had a few drinks with good tunes. The next day we had breakfast at a cafe in town but didn't go tire tubing down the river cause it was still cold and rainy. We went down to a wharf on the Bay of Fundy where we checked out how low the water could go. The bay has the highest tides in the world and when we went there were boats on the ground because it was low tide. It was pretty amazing to see. We had lunch and played frisbee in Wolfville before heading to Gaspereau Winery for a quick tour. They made some fantastic wine and port there, and there was even a maple syrup wine which was very rich but good. Unfortunately I couldn't buy any cause I couldn't really justify it. We had another photo stop at the Lookout which looked over the Annapolis Valley, and then went down to the water to skip stones. I think I've injured myself from too much skipping. Oops. It could also have been the canoeing though. The water rising wasn't so impressive at that time of day but I've heard that it can go up as much as a metre a minute, which is pretty impressive. We were back in Halifax a little while after that and after some issues with Phillip and I not having booked rooms, we were checked back into the HBH. Phillip made me dinner which was lovely and then we went out to meet everyone else from tour at a pub. We played some pool and then went back to the Palace which was horrible again, but in a semifun cheesy way. Phillip managed to have himself a good time but I knew when they started the Hot Legs and Hard Body competition that it was all downhill from there (there was only one hot guy out of about 10 that got up and took his shirt off, the rest were mostly weedy and/or scary). Ended up going home on my own cause JR was so drunk that he wandered off of his own accord.

Yesterday I got up late, hung out with JR and Phillip and then Phillip and I went for a short walk around the town in the lovely sunshine. Met up with Raymond and decided to get the bus to Sydney even though the ferry wouldn't be running. We ended up staying in a hotel here in Sydney overnight since there were winds up to 150km and hour on the gulf (wouldn't want to be on the ferry anyway!). Apparently this is the area that the Perfect Storm (from the movie) actually occurred in. It was similar conditions to what there are today so I'm very glad not to be on the water! We're going to try again tomorrow ...