I love it when I meet people who find beauty in the things that others tend to ignore. This morning, a colleague and I were talking about our long weekend travels, and he was curious to learn more about Nova Scotia. Since he and his fiancee have a friend who is from Cleveland, they went out there for the long weekend to visit her. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of Cleveland, but after I gave him some suggestions and told him the food scene there is actually quite good, he went in with an open mind. And he came back beaming and saying he really enjoyed his time there, from the general vibe of the downtown area to the food scene.

“I never thought I’d like it, but I had a lot of fun!” he said.

That makes me so happy.

Long weekends rarely feel long. Three-day-weekends always fly by too quickly. And even when we took off two extra days to stretch our three-day-weekend into a five-day-weekend to Nova Scotia, it still felt like it ended too soon and we didn’t have enough time to see all the beauty that is this beloved province. So I hate it when people ask about your “long weekend” as though it truly was long and felt like some great rest period.

But sometimes, the weekend may be too long for your skin, or at least, maybe the diet you are giving to your skin. I noticed on Sunday morning that i was developing bumps across my forehead, and I wondered if it was because of the lack of vegetables I tend to get during travel, or if it was because of all the seafood I am eating. No one ever said seafood was great for skin.

We had breakfast with Chris’s colleague yesterday, who lives and works here in Halifax. He was telling us about how Halifax was still fairly under the radar but of course, as with any up and coming city, is becoming more expensive. As we could see from the Halifax seaport where we ate together, a lot of construction is actively going on throughout downtown Halifax, with everything from condo and apartment high rises to new office buildings. One very old and tall building looked as though it would soon be knocked down.  And while Canadians certainly travel to Halifax, Americans certainly don’t en masse (no surprise). And even with the people who live right here in Halifax and Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Highlands National Park is not a place that people go to often or even at all given how far to the east end of the province it goes. It is literally at the very tip, and it’s considered to many to be no-man’s-land. Chris’s colleague said he’s only been there about three times ever, and once was for a wedding.

So after breakfast, we drove the 4.5-hour drive out there and settled into our cozy little cabin in the woods, and by the time we left today, we completed three hikes that overlooked the gorgeous Nova Scotia Atlantic coastline. We hiked through dirt, water, massive and unstable rocks, and thorny bushes, and I got my legs all scratched up in the process. The weather was also quite cold, as I realized I had slightly under-dressed. Although the sun just came out as we left today, I’d only imagine that on a sunny blue-skied day, the water would be a brilliant blue against the bright green that is literally everywhere in Cape Breton. That’s kind of the way I imagine Scotland based on the travel photos I have seen. This province is so underrated with so much natural beauty, and since it’s not touched much, it will probably continue on for quite a long time.

I’m happy we’re visiting it at a time when pretty much no one I know has gone here. It’ll be one of those places that will probably become more popular and well known, and we’ll look back and say that we went there before it became all the rage, and we advocated for it long ago. 🙂

Whenever we’re traveling, at some point when I’m taking time off from work or seeing my friends in the time leading up to the trip, colleagues and friends will ask me where I am going. Whenever I’m going to a popular place or a place that seems high on the “it” list for travel, like Australia, Thailand, or Spain, people will inevitably respond with oohs and ahhs, respond positively, and say things like, “I’m so jealous!”, “I want to go there so badly!!”, or “OHMIGOD, HAVE AN AMAZING TIME! TAKE TONS OF PICS!” When it’s places that are a tad bit off the beaten track to those who either don’t travel a lot, don’t travel at all, or only go to “popular,” well known attractions, I get questions like, “why are you going there?”, what are you doing there?”, “what’s there that makes you want to go?”, or lastly, “do you have relatives there who you’re visiting?” (this last one, I got a lot for Korea and Taiwan from white colleagues. I am not Taiwanese. I am also not Korean. And Chris is obviously neither). I realize they don’t mean any harm and aren’t trying to be judgmental, but why should Paris get oohs and ahhs while Halifax gets quizzical looks, and Taipei gets the relatives question?

I was having this chat with Chris, and when I told him a colleague who is actually from Canada (suburbs of Toronto) asked why I was going to Halifax, he looked at me plainly and said, “Because I fucking want to go there. And I don’t care what you think or what you think you know about it.” No one informs his travel decisions. We inform our travel decisions. “I don’t take travel advice from morons.”

Well stated. I love my fierce darling.

Before this trip, other than the greenery, the mountains, and the water of Nova Scotia, I was thinking about eating lobster. Chris and I rarely eat lobster while in the U.S. unless it happens to be part of a dish. It’s so expensive and oftentimes not very fresh, especially in New York City (for the record, I think Luke’s Lobster is just okay, and their crab roll is far better than their lobster roll). The only time I’ve had lobster and been extremely satisfied was the one time I went to Maine, and being in Maine, of course the lobster was extremely cheap and cooked just as I ordered it, so it was perfection. The second time I had it and loved it, it was in a lobster roll (buttered, no mayonnaise) at the famous and well-acclaimed Neptune Oyster in the North End of Boston, and I was so turned off by not only the wait to get in (2+ hours), but also the rude and surly service I received.

Well, when I was doing research for this trip, across the board, I found that seafood was (not surprisingly) far cheaper in Nova Scotia, bordering on Maine lobster prices, and with the added benefit of the U.S. dollar strength against the Canadian dollar, I was so excited to get our lobster fix for (relatively) cheap here. There’s lobster rolls on pretty much every menu, and some are as cheap as $15 CAD (that’s just over $11 USD!). I told Chris that I wanted to eat as much lobster as possible, the glutton I am.

Well, we drove out to Lunenberg, a UNESCO world heritage site town just over an hour west of Halifax, and the places that were supposed to have lobster rolls… had none. In fact, they were completely removed from the menus that I had seen online. When we asked the place we ended up eating lunch at about this, she said that the price of lobster was far too high at this time, and that they couldn’t sell lobster rolls at a reasonable price in order to actually make a profit, so they decided to remove them from the menu completely for now. We were both crushed.

It was fine in the end today. We had delicious seafood chowder and local scallops at rock-bottom prices and high freshness, but the lobster lust continued.

Today, we arrived in our fifth Canadian province, Nova Scotia, as part of our goals to hit every Canadian province (and territory). After an annoying connection and long layover in Toronto due to American Airlines not having any direct flights between New York City and Halifax, we pretty much spent the whole day traveling and arrived just in time for dinner. If we had flown direct, the flight would have only taken about two hours, so I guess that’s the price of loyalty sometimes. Luckily for us, Halifax has no shortage of good food, and being right on the Atlantic, seafood is plentiful, local, and fresh throughout the entire province, and at prices that are relatively economical.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about eating and viewing menus in countries like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is that there is a very strong Asian influence across menus, and it’s usually done tastefully and well. It’s not like when you’re in the middle of the U.S. and you see “peanut noodles” on a random Western-style restaurant, and you’re completely repulsed at the idea of what they mean when they say “peanut noodles” (what they probably mean is that they’ve mixed Skippy peanut butter with some oil and tossed it in some noodles, and who really wants to eat that?). Tonight for example, we ordered tikka masala mussels as a starter, and the curry sauce tasted legitimately like tikka masala, and the mussels were local and extremely fresh tasting. These mussels were definitely not frozen, and that tikka masala really tasted Indian-British, and could have potentially been made in a tandoori-type oven.

In Canada as in Australian and New Zealand, there seems to be a larger respect for Asian cuisine and culture in general. It’s not just about General Tso’s for Chinese, and people don’t just assume that when you want Japanese food that you want sushi. In these countries, when a non-Asian person gives you Asian restaurant recommendations, you could actually trust that their recommendations will actually be good and up to your standard. Sadly, I could never say that about the U.S., even though I’ve lived in three very metropolitan areas.