August 2008 Family Vacation Part 3

August 6
Another night in the B&B in Southwest Harbor and since we needed to leave before they normally serve breakfast, they sent us off with muffins so we could head to the ferry. There are 2 main ways to get to Nova Scotia…driving up through New Brunswick (about 12 hours) or by the Cat, a high speed catamaran car ferry that takes about 3.5 hours. Amazing ride....they had 4 areas set aside for movies and a small area with one-armed bandits/slot machines, a duty-free shop with perfumes and booze, and several small food areas. It was a bit pricy, no, change that: it was pretty expensive, but worth saving the time. We left Bar Harbor at 9 in the morning and were docking in Yarmouth 3.5 hours later. Nova Scotia is on Atlantic Time, so we changed one hour.

(Left) In the front cabin watching for whales. (Above) The fantail from the high speed engine.

We picked a place to eat at random on the main street and happened to find the one place (so he advertised) in Nova Scotia with a singing waiter. None of us noticed the sign but after he took our order and then brought the food to the table, he got the mike on and belted out “I Left my Heart in San Fransciso” What a hoot! We all had seafood again; Graham and I tried the fish cakes, similar to crab cakes but made with haddock and mashed potatoes. Not quite a latke. *G*

We then headed up the coast, first on the coastal road called the Lighthouse trail, but we soon discovered it would take us about 4 hours to go what my mapping and the Garmin indicated would be 2 hours via the main road. So we went back to the main road and then did the last 30 miles or so back on the local road. The main road, by the way, is at interstate standard some of the time, with restricted access, but most of the time the main highways are 2 lane local roads. It takes longer to get from “here to there” because of windy roadways and local speed limits. We opted to take a small local ferry across one of the bays.

We stayed in the town of Lunenburg which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its Scandinavian history. The town caters to tourists with lots of B&Bs, shops with a lot of local art, and a number of good restaurants. I’ll give you three guesses what we had for dinner......wait, you probably don’t need that many chances by now. *G*

The town had a lot of Victorian era trim work on the houses and I started taking pics, even more fun were the street ornaments on the light poles.

View across Lunenburg harbor (below) and along road to Lunenburg (above)