Maritimes Trip Notes

For most of the maritimes I would book in advance, especially since canadians are tending to travel within the country this summer instead of overseas. The hotel selection over there is not as plentiful - the cities are all small and the better accommodations are almost always the inns and B&Bs, or vacation rentals if you like those. Each of those provinces has a strong tourism association that will send you trip planning information if you go to their website and request it. They send a catalog with all the accommodation options in each town, which you can go through and look up online to find the ones you like best. They might have this online by now, too. Or, go to TripAdvisor. They have an impressive number of entries for such an under-the-radar travel destination.

If you give me an idea of your itinerary I can make suggestions based on our research and actual trip in 2006. We only did Halifax/Peggy's Cove and Cape Breton Island, but we started out planning to do PEI as well, and my sister went to school at Acadia so I know a lot about most of Nova Scotia. I know very little about Newfoundland except that the road is really long and the ferry isn't fast either!

If you want to browse, you can see all my bookmarks from planning our trip: http://www.kaboodle.com/desktraveler/travel--canada.html. The list has sections, and you can use the drop down menu to find Nova Scotia - specifics (places we went to), Nova Scotia - overview (other stuff I collected during research), and PEI (when I got excited about cycling where it's really flat!).

$450 is still a great price for summer flights, no doubt about that! Europe has just decided to force airlines to advertise all-inclusive pricing so you know what you're going to pay instead of seeing the $99 teaser and having to multiply by two and add $250 in fees. Hopefully that idea will take hold on this continent, too.

Let me give you comments on your trip plan from what I've heard and what I've experienced and you can take what you like and ignore the rest. Are you ready for this? It might turn into quite an essay...

So, you've got a 6-7 hour drive from Toronto to Montreal, staying 2 nights there. Good start :) The next drive to St John looks like 10 hours either through Riviere-du-loup or via Maine. That's a really long drive! Are you sure you don't want to stop in Quebec City for a night, or you could overnight in Riv-du-loup - I camped there for a night, not much there but it breaks up the drive. You could bypass Quebec City, but the old city is really nice. Montmorency Falls and the Ste-Anne de Beaupre basillica are great to see.

Anyway, then you have 2 nights in St John. That should be fun. Be sure to check out the tides in the Bay of Fundy, especially at low tide when the little harbours completely dry up and the fishing boats rest on the ocean floor until the tide comes back in - great photo op!!! There is a reversing falls at the river mouth, but most people don't find that too interesting unless you're into water phenomena. If you can't find a good spot to see the effects of the tides in St John, try again in Digby (or up toward Annapolis Royal), or again in Truro.

Are you taking the Digby ferry route from there to White Point? That's a good way to do it. When you get to Digby you could go north toward Annapolis Royal to explore a bit if you feel like it. The drive across to the east coast is quite boring and fairly slow (2 lane country roads, unless it has been upgraded since I was there).

The drive up the east coast to Halifax is nice and leisurely, with a stop in Lunenburg an absolute MUST - for photos and browsing the shops. You can stop at the memorial to the SwissAir flight that went down just before Peggy's Cove, and you need to stop at Peggy's Cove itself of course. If it's a nice day plan to spend time wandering over the landscape, enjoying the sounds of the surf and the sunshine, and taking lots of pictures. It's a great place for a picnic. If it's a stormy day, the action of the surf will be mesmerizing, and the restaurant has good chowder :)

You'll probably want to stop for dinner in Halifax - the restaurant we liked was The Sweet Basil Bistro, although there's plenty to choose from. Try to find a place with live music after dinner - either a rowdy pub or we found really good jazz. My sister used to recommend the shoestring pub.

The Holiday Inn is a bit out of town which will be good for getting out in the morning. If you don't eat breakfast at the hotel, wait until you get to Truro. There's a diner in a small hotel that had good breakfasts for extremely cheap. I think it was the Stonehouse Motel. You might want to explore Antigonish on the way up or on the return trip - people seem to like the college town but we skipped it. If you want dinner when you're approaching the causeway, we had a good seafood dinner at a place on the north side of the highway, about 15 minutes before the causeway. It was a little resort, too, but I don't remember the name :( There's not much in the way of a "nice" dinner in Port Hawkesbury so someone recommended this one instead.

I can't seem to figure out where the Dundee Resort is on Cape Breton - google maps puts it near Whycocomagh, is that right? What route are you planning for Cape Breton? Whycocomagh is just a whistle-stop at a highway junction, but it's a gorgeous shoreline, especially if it's a foggy morning, there's a nice hike up a hill for bigger views, and there's a superb bakery (Bayside Cafe). We stayed at the Keltic Quay, which was superb. At the Natalie McMaster concert we happened to meet a guy that lives down the road and he offered us the use of his canoe - he told us where to find all the stuff if we felt like using it during our stay. The people all around Cape Breton are fabulous!

Our route for Cape Breton was counter-clockwise. 2 nights on the east side of the lake, with a day trip to Louisbourg and the Glace Bay Miners Museum. 2 nights in Ingonish, with a day hike and some wandering on the coast - great dinner at Mainstreet Bakery, lavish breakfast buffet at the Keltic Lodge (dinner there is apparently hit-or-miss but can be great). From there we drove the Cabot Trail up the east side, down the west, to Whycocomagh for our last 2 nights. We spent an afternoon in Beddeck in the great shops, went to Mabou to explore (sand dunes, great pub scene), and did the tour and a good dinner at the Glenora scotch distillery.

Your trip won't be as leisurely, of course, but it's not too far between your two lodgings on Cape Breton, so you could definitely do Mabou and Beddeck between them. Then the next, long, day would be around the top, maybe a detour to Louisbourg, and straight down to Pictou. 1 day on PEI is short, but it depends on what you're looking to do. I count 10 nights in your itinerary - does that mean you'll take time to see Quebec city on the way back? That would be perfect!

Yup, it's a doable trip as long as you're up for all the driving and being constantly on the go, or else not actually seeing as much as I've listed here. I've almost forgotten... we posted reviews of places we stayed on TripAdvisor (http://www.tripadvisor.com/members-reviews/DeskTraveler), and we mentioned the good restaurants in the posts for the nearby accommodations.

Well that certainly did turn into an essay. I'll have to post it as a trip report. Actually, I think we posted a trip report on Frommer's... nope, I guess I never got around to it. But lots of other people have and there's quite a bit of stuff there to give you more ideas. Anyway, you probably gave up reading my babble by now... ;)