9th September 2022
Another early start this morning with breakfast at 6.30am, and plans to depart from the hotel at 7 am for Toronto Pearson Airport to catch our flight to Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Unlike yesterday, the morning traffic in Toronto was much reduced and we were at the airport in a bit over 30 minutes. Checking in for our flight was reasonably quick as the airport was not that busy and we had already checked in on line. All we really had to do was to get bag tags and drop off the bags.
Getting through security was a bit more challenging. Obviously there were a lot of new scanning operators and if they could interpret the scan the bags were isolated for manual inspection. In the queue we were in about 40% of the bags were set aside for manual checking, which was very time consuming.
We still arrived at our departure gate with plenty of time to spare and decided to see if we could get a cup of “real” coffee (not the diluted brown water they pass off as coffee over here). Our first attempt failed, they referred us to another café that did have expresso machine but would only serve takeaways in containers about the size of a small bucket. Most of us gave up at this stage, but Carole persisted and managed to persuade a different café to only half fill the takeway container and add 2 shots of coffee. The end result was still pretty ordinary.
Negotiating team searching for a decent coffee
Once again the flight was full, and the check in agents were pleading with people to check in their carry on baggage as the aircraft did not have enough space. The real problem here is the size of the carry on baggage they allow. We had no issues with our carry ons.
Our aircraft was a very new Airbus A220 and was very comfortable. It is only a short flight, a little over 1.5 hours, and the weather has been very kind so far, so flying conditions were very good.
Finally arriving in Halifax at 1.50pm local time, baggage collection was relatively quick and we headed off to the Thrifty desk to collect our rental car (a large Toyota SUV). The rental company desk had computer problems, so check in was slow, but eventually we were on our way to begin our road trip.
The drive into Halifax downtown area was a bit over 30 mins on good roads, and soon we were checked in to The Halliburton, our accommodation for the next 2 nights. It is a quaint boutique hotel with lots of history and generous sized rooms.
By this time we were settle it was getting close to 3 pm and we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so we walked down to the waterfront and had lunch at Chianti, a nice casual restaurant not far from the cruise terminal. A feed of local seafood washed down with a local beer was just what the doctor ordered.
A Norwegian Line cruise ship was in port not far from our lunch spot, and there were plenty of cruise passengers wandering around.
After lunch we walked along the boardwalk, which runs along the Southern side of the harbour. There are lots of restaurants, bars and tourist cruise boats that run harbour tours. With the cruise ship is in town they all seem well patronized, it will be interesting to see if the same level of activity remains tomorrow.
At around 5 pm we headed back to our hotel, to prepare for dinner at the hotel restaurant, (supposed to be the best in town), at 6.30 pm.
Dinner was excellent and we had our own private room.
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