Wanderung 30

[Bob] I wanted to make a bigger parachute for "Cecil", my hard-boiled test egg, and Monika wanted to see the Victorian gardens in Halifax, so we set off for the center of town and, if we found nothing there, for a Canadian Tire discount store located on the other side of the downtown area. Although the yarn shop we were directed to had, predictably but unfortunately, just yarn, the arts and crafts store located just across the street looked much more promising to find the two essential components of a parachute, the canopy and the suspension lines. After rummaging around the aisles of the store, I finally found a wadded up sheet of plastic back behind some displays that looked perfect.

Unfortunately it turned out to be plastic wrapping for shipping items and they refused to sell any but they offered to give it to me for free--crazy Canadians! What kind of business model is that? Well, I can be just as stubborn as any Canadian, because I am, after all, half Canadian, so I insisted on purchasing something so that they could make a profit on the deal. Fortunately, before we came to blows about not paying for the scrap of plastic, Monika found some strong yarn that I could use for the parachute lines so I could finally check out and officially pay them some money.

In retrospect, it's probably a good thing I didn't get in a fight with that salesclerk over the issue of non-payment as she was young and had large tattoos on both arms and probably could have whipped my butt even though she was kind of scrawny. What the salesclerk thought about the old white-haired fogy with the neon yellow shirt who wanted to pay for leftover wrapping plastic is unclear, but she did warn the lady at the cash register about me, as I was told when we finally found the yarn to buy and went to check out. Sometimes I think I'm going to become a legend in my own mind.

Be that as it may, I now had the raw materials for Cecil's larger parachute. Thus, we turned our attention to finding the Victorian gardens, which were a little further back up the hill that the Citadel, which we had visited in Wanderung 21, is situated upon. We had to walk past an artillery museum, which was closed (Monika: Lucky Me!!), but they did have a couple of artillery pieces outside that I could gawk at.

We came in a side entrance rather than the big, formal, wrought iron gate that marks the main entrance, and started wandering around the network of paths that crisscross the 16 acre site. We first encountered a pond or small lagoon that had tiny models of two ships poking above its surface--the Titanic and a WWII corvette that was made at a local shipyard.

But the real beauty of the gardens was the extensive set of carefully landscaped flower beds. So pretty and with the sun beaming down, very vivid colors, especially the rose beds where several varieties of roses were blooming and scenting the air with their mild perfume. Huge hyacinths were also blooming profusely and looked almost magical with the sunlight refracting through them. And in the middle were fountains.

But apparently Nova Scotia is a hotbed of dahlia breeders, because one large area was dedicated to the oddest-shaped and most intricately colored dahlias I have ever seen. They had dahlias in every hue of the rainbow and in an astonishing variety of shapes ranging from pure balls of blossoms looking vaguely like a flowery golf ball, to star-shaped dahlias that apparently mimicked the shape and color of some orchids. I had no idea you could breed dahlias to have such an extreme variation, and I'm sure it took much time and effort to do so.

The amount of work required for this tour de force of flowers only became apparent when I saw a ladder with a kneeling pad carefully stretched over one of the intricate floral arrangements about 6 inches over the surface. The flowers in those displays are so thickly planted that the gardeners cannot actually set foot in the flower beds, they must instead kneel on the bloody ladder and scrunch over to do all the weeding, pruning, fertilizing, and so forth. What a back-breaking labor of love!

We had been walking for over two hours by that point, so we kind of slowly ambled around the rest of the gardens before heading back to the ship. But the ornate Victorian bandstand surrounded by just gorgeous sets of flower beds is something you should not miss, and, what the heck, as long as you're there pop across to the little snack shop (at the rear of the picture below) that sells sandwiches and really good ice cream cones, and have a bite to eat. (We did!)

But whatever you do, don't feed the ducks in the pond because the Canadian government strongly and specifically prohibited that. Apparently if they ARE fed, the ducks, realizing that they have a good thing going, instead of migrating South for the winter, will stay in Halifax to mooch off the kind Canadians, who probably give out free duck food with the same reckless abandon that they give out free wrapping plastic!

Exitting the park through the big formal entrance with its fancy wrought-iron gate, we first turned south along a little side park and then cut straight over to the cruise ship dock. There we picked up the boardwalk that led us back past a docked cruise ship, a statue to Canadian emigrants, and finally back to the Regal Princess.

We had lunch at the buffet and then retired to our balcony for the rest of the afternoon, watching the sailing ships criss-crossing the harbor and later the Holland America cruise ship Maasdam steaming out of port. It was an exquisitely pretty and relaxing way to spend our last day abroad before returning home.