600 kilometres of "Ocean Playground", minus the ocean

What else did you expect from Nova Scotia?

Day 8: Hampton ~ Cap Egmont ~ Digby (683km)

It was a little chilly inside our cabin this morning, but not too bad, and far better than bite that greeted me on many a winter morning in Miyagawa. After a quick breakfast, we were on the road again.

We drove out to see a little of the north coast, but decided to abort mid-way for time reasons. Instead, we did a coastal drive down to Cap Egmont to see the bottle houses. These small buildings are found in a yard of a house virtually in the middle of nowhere but seem to get a steady trickle of tourists. Originally, some guy decided he wanted to construct buildings using empty glass bottles and so that’s exactly what he did. Every part of the three buildings is made of nothing other than mortar and glass bottles of every shape and size. Clearly someone with too much time on his hands.

What was more interesting was where it was located. Over our three days on the island, we had seen the red, white and blue Acadian flag flapping in various places, but in the area around Cap Egmont, nearly every house had one flying. After talking to the girl at the bottle houses, I found out that that particular corner of PEI was strongly Acadian and that most there are francophone, something I didn’t expect in PEI.

With it nearing noon, we decided it was best to get on to Nova Scotia, so after a quick early lunch we got in the car and just drove and drove and drove – about 600 kilometres.

For being Canada’s “ocean playground” (Nova Scotia’s motto), our first 600 kilometres saw only glimpses of the ocean and an awful lot of woods, fields, and farms – nothing we haven’t seen plenty of already. Blame that on the route 215 of the Glooscap route. Someone at the tourist office definitely screwed up in marking this as a coastal drive.

So you can understand why the highlight of the day was a stop in tiny Annapolis Royal. Probably unknown to all of you, this town was actually of quite significant importance a few hundred years ago when the British and French were wrestling for control of the region. In fact, Annapolis Royal has the distinction of being the most attacked place in all of North America: it was attacked no less than 12 times, a fact which you wouldn’t guess based on the size of Fort Anne, which sits right in town. This picturesque little town overlooks a beautiful natural harbour and has 150 historic homes as well as the oldest street in Canada, its Lower St. George Street.

However, my reason for visiting Annapolis Royal was entirely different. I came to look up Matt, a curling buddy from UofT, hoping on the off-chance that he would be in his hometown. We always used to tease him about his tiny little town and I never believed that I would one day be there myself. So I went into Ye Olde Towne Pub, gave his last name, and asked the girl there if she knew anyone by it. As luck would have it (or maybe in a town this small luck has nothing to do with it) she did, and she quickly looked up the phone number and rang up his house for me. I talked to his dad for a few minutes and found out that he was actually on the opposite coast, in Vancouver, working on a project for Toronto-based Accenture. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

We now find ourselves down the road in Digby, renowned world-wide (so they say) for their scallops, which we felt obliged to try out for dinner tonight. Yum. Our B&B is right on the waterfront, but then again Digby is so small that it seems everything here is.