And a long road it is. The trick is to pick and choose the spots the itinerary suggests on the way from one place to other with a little fast research. That way you don’t find yourself thinking “Tell me again why I didn’t fly?”
Bar Harbor is where we caught The CAT, a ferry to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.The ferry was a comfortable 4.5 hour ride, arriving in Yarmouth around sunset. Our hotel was a bit of a throwback and I got a big kick out of the laundry chutes that looked like portals in the hallways labelled “linen”.
Yarmouth to Halifax with stops in Shelbourne and Lunenberg, both port towns. We spent about 3 days in Lunenberg when we drove through the Maritimes in 2012 and it deserves its status as a World Heritage site. Halifax to Baddeck, a town on the Bras d’Or which serves as a jump off stop for seeing the Cabot Trail, a scenic park with spectacular ocean views and dense green forests. The town itself is easy and laid back, the people genuinely friendly, and the seventies music was not too loud in the place we had dinner to drown out conversation. We drove around the park on Tuesday, 8/04, and it was peaceful and quiet. At times the water was only a few feet from the car, at others we were seeing the ocean vista from high cliffs. Some stunning scenery.
Baddeck to North Sydney where the ferry to Newfoundland boards. But we couldn’t resist stopping in Sydney, a town whose claim to fame seems to be a giant fiddle, created in honor of the music of Scotland and its impact in Nova Scotia (where many of the signs are in both English and Gaelic)
The ferry to Agrigentia is a 16 hour, overnight trip. Cabins (private baths) are books months in advance but we were able to snag a sleeping pod which was surprisingly comfortable. Bunk beds, each with 3 electric outlets at the head, a reading light, clean white sheets, comforters and duvets. Sound proofed, very dark, a door that locks. We slept well, arriving about 9:30 am today in Agrigentia.
I am delighted with how cold it feels here — in the fifties. And laughing that the weather reports back in North Sydney were reporting a cautionary heat alert — they were expecting the temp to hit 80.
