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Free travel and a bit of a bang

We visited Downtown Halifax again today, rather than take the compact lorry into town yesterday we walked in and caught the bus back.
Today we got on the bus and the driver put her hand over the money box saying “Tuesdays are free to the over 65’s” How did she know I was over 65? I only feel like I am 30ish but what a great deal. I was so overcome with this bargain I took Mrs Lucas on a cruise, the ferry across to Dartmouth is also free to oldies on Tuesdays and our guide to Halifax said Dartmouth had trendy shops and good restaurants. On arrival I asked a lady in a coffee shop for directions to the town centre to which she smiled and said “there isn’t one” and guess what, she was a little unkind but it is true to say it is a one horse town where regrettably the horse has died. It’s main “attraction” is a Peace Pavilion dedicated to World Peace (pictured at the bottom of the page). About 20 countries sent exhibits to be displayed, I am afraid I did not get the significance of the UK contribution – a house brick – makes you feel proud to be British.
A good job it didn’t cost anything to get there.

As previously advertised we visited the Maritime Museum, another good one which had more information about the Louisbourg siege than the Louisbourg museum.
It also had a big section on an explosion in 1917. Two ships collided in the harbour one of which was loaded with explosives en-route to the battlefields of France, the bang was the largest man made explosion until the A bombs were dropped on Japan, 1700 people died and 9000 were injured, a half ton anchor was found two miles away. Nothing was left of Halifax city centre, the pictures show the same area before and after the explosion.

The harbour front in Halifax is quite trendy / touristy, our host at the B&B described it as Blackpool but it is rather better than that, we have had dinner on the dockside on two evenings, by that you have probably gathered it is no longer raining.

At great expense the owners have installed the whale fin shown in the picture for children to climb, it has soft playground matting all round so they don't hurt themselves and then some idiot put up a sign saying "Do Not Climb".
Fortunately Canadian children and their parents have the sense to ignore the instruction.

Tomorrow we take a 5½ hour flight to Calgary, plenty of time for me to write a boring summary of our thoughts on Nova Scotia before heading off into the Rockies.