I'm Off!

Tomorrow after work I'm off for a week's vacation in Nova Scotia, Canada. My father has aunts, uncles, and cousins there so we'll spend our time visiting relatives, eating delicious local specialties, relaxing in the sun on the deck of our cottage, and taking day trips to quaint towns and historical sites.

Nova Scotia is one of those places that looks quite close to Massachusetts on the map, but is actually a bit of a pain to get there. We'll be driving up just past the Canadian border tomorrow when I leave work and stay overnight in New Brunswick, then take a 3-hr ferry to Nova Scotia the next morning. If you live in New England, you've probably seen the many commercials for The Cat which claim that you'll "fly across the ocean" to scenic Yarmouth for a perfect weekend trip. If a 2 hour drive to Portland, ME, followed by a six hour bumpy and rather nauseating catameran ride, followed by more hours' drives to Nova Scotia's bigger tourist towns is not my idea of a good weekend getaway! Definitely rather false advertising! (The commercial shows Cape Breton, the province's biggest scenic area, which is a 4-5 hr drive from where The Cat docks.) I should note that there are flights from Boston to Nova Scotia's capital, Halifax - a lovely town to explore - but not really an option for us as our relatives live on the opposite side of Nova Scotia. It is one of those modern anomolies that I can leave my house at 7am in the morning and pretty much be in the pool at a Florida hotel by lunchtime, but it takes a day, plus, to visit our relatives where their local cable carrier gets Boston tv stations because they consider it so close!!

Enjoy your Friday and weekend! (We're staying in the countryside where cell service is a bit spotty, but I may try to sneak in a post or two via my Blackberry if I can.)