We awoke really early this morning, about 5:30 AM—that’s 3:30 AM our time. After a cup of hotel room coffee, a shower, and re-packing, we caught up on email, read news from back home, and glanced at national and world news. John and I met in the lobby, and caught a shuttle back to the airport for a rental car. We returned to the hotel to pick up Kay, Sandy, and our luggage, and were on our way. Our first stop was just down the road at Tim Horton’s for coffee and a breakfast sandwich. Tim Horton’s is the coffee shop of choice in Canada. After breakfast, we continued northward, and about 11 AM we noted a sign for McLobster, advertising lobster rolls at McDonald’s. Of course we had to stop and give them a try.

We then drove east and further north another hour or so to the Celtic Music Centre at Judique, Nova Scotia, for lunch and a ceilidh (pronounced "cay lee"). Lunch was good, but the ceilidh was great, featuring two fiddle players and a pianist. In addition the young woman demonstrated the step dance, a Scottish dance. Both the music and the dance reminded me of Mountain View, Arkansas.

We continued our drive further north and again east to Baddeck, Nova Scotia, for dinner and our overnight accommodations, with occasional glances at the western coast of Cape Breton Island. Along the way, we saw old churches and small harbor towns in an otherwise undeveloped countryside. We also saw a single malt "scotch" distillery, but they cannot call it scotch because it is not made in Scotland. It is the only single malt whiskey made in North America, and no, we did not sample—too expensive!

We arrived at the Bell View Bed and Breakfast in Baddeck, our overnight accomodatons, squeezed luggage into the small, over furnished room (no room for luggage), and enjoyed some quiet time for about an hour.

We had dinner, lobster of course, at the recommended Bell Buoy restaurant, and the food was okay, but much too expensive. We wrapped up the evening catching up on our reading.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad