Happy First of July

We won’t be anywhere near the United States for the Fourth of July, so instead we celebrated Canada Day which is July 1.  We celebrated Canada Day big.  We spent the day in Halifax.  We toured the Halifax Citadel.  High on a hill overlooking both the harbor and the land entrance to the city, various versions of the Citadel have been there for the protection of Halifax since the mid 1700s.  From what we read of the history, no military force ever tried to attack Halifax, but the Citadel was there in case they had.  It was first built by the British and later was used by the Canadian Armed Forces.  There is also an Army museum at the Citadel.  Best of all, for Canada Day, entrance to the Citadel was a freebie!

From the Citadel, we went to our afternoon performance of the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo (see prior post).  It was more moving to go on Canada Day with the renditions of “O Canada” and “God Save the Queen” which we sang to the words of “America”  (My Country Tis of Thee)  which is the same melody. 

After the performance, we went to a pub for a bite to eat.  In one of our visitor guides we had seen a coupon for a pound and a half of mussels for $2.99.  Now there is a coupon Gary could not pass up.  When we went to redeem the coupon, we were told to keep it for another day as the price all day Sunday is $2.99 and did Gary therefore want another batch.   So instead of an appetizer, he made a meal out them.  I still don’t know how can eat those things and even he had to agree that they weren’t quite as good as the fantastic scallops we had the night before, another Nova Scotia treat.

From the pub, we went to Casino Nova Scotia – Halifax.  Now the real purpose of our visit was to hit the cash machine.  We are trying not to use our charge cards much as they give bad exchange rates at high fees, but we had discovered that cash machines at casinos give good rates at low fees even for larger withdrawals.  And as long as we were there…………..  I went over and dropped $20 in a slot machine.  I circled back to the blackjack table where I left Gary, and lo and behold he was on a nice little winning streak, so we had a good Canada Day there as well.  It must have been the good luck Gary’s friends Frank and Sammy brought him.  To close the day out, we went to the waterfront of the harbor and enjoyed the fireworks.

We toured Halifax another day as well taking the city gardens, various historical buildings, the harbor front,