Canada Trip part 1: On Discount Airlines

Yay for jetlag. Yesterday I was just a bit tired. Today I feel like I was hit by a truck. Heat & humidity not helping.

Anyway, starting with the cheap charter airline experience.

We flew to Halifax on Thomas Cook airline booked via Canadian Affair. This was an outstandingly good cheap flight (£89 + tax per seat). Seats are big and far apart, they provide a bottle of water on each seat, nor did we go hungry - a big meal and decent-sized snack were also provided. I had zero expectations and was thus very pleasantly surprised. We will be doing this again.

Our internal flight was on Westjet, the first of what is now Canada's many discount airlines. This was also unexpectedly a roomy-seat affair, complete with wacky staff at check-in and on the plane (I was unaware that they advertise this feature). Also ridiculously cheap (a total of CDN $110 per seat). Not much in the way of food, but they not only tell you that beforehand, they also encourage you to bring your own. Their use of Terminal 2 at Pearson Airport in Toronto is also helpful - there's nobody there so it's easy to find your ride.

So far, so good.

Now that I've had more experience with cheap airlines than last time, I have to confirm that MyTravel are the worst airline I've ever flown (quite possibly worse than Air Canada). I persist in travelling with them because Canadian Affair do so such good deals. I'm not talking about saving a couple of pounds, but in excess of £100 per person. Now that they also deal with Thomas Cook for equally good prices, I may be able to get around this. (I always book with Canadian Affair because of the excellent way they bailed us out when Canada 3000 died.) Although MyTravel blew less badly than the last time, it was still a less than pleasant flight. To be fair, it's not entirely the airline that make for such bad flights, but it seems like every arsehole in the world (both Canadian and British) feels the need to use this airline. Which is not helped by the cramped seat situation (which until now I had taken for granted to cheap airlines). On the up side, I did get a window seat so I got to see lots of Labrador, and for once we took off and landed on time.

We narrowly avoided the excess luggage charges this time, both suitcases weighing in somewhere between 19 kg and the 20 kg limit. Not bad considering the house we were staying in had no scales! Having said that, they now at least have an official cashier who issues receipts and takes credit cards for dealing with excess baggage, rather than the cash which went into the Pearson employees' pockets last time. We also avoided dehydration because we brought our own water. Which Jason couldn't get to, because the idiots in front of him kept their seats reclined all the way for the entire trip, including takeoff and landing. He managed to flag down flight attendants (because there were some in his section of the plane - back where I was sitting, that would have been impossible) and extract some free water.

I even failed to have any bad experiences at Pearson airport this time round, which is also unprecedented. Thus I convinced myself that I'd probably have to fight with Immigration at 6:00 am on my return, which as outlined in my last entry, also didn't happen.

Everything on this entire trip went incredibly smoothly. Which was great, but being the eternal pessimist, I've been waiting for something bad to happen every time something goes well.

Canada Trip Part 2: Atlantic Canada

Nova Scotia is a completely wonderful place. We spent two days wandering around Halifax before we picked up the car, and didn't manage to do half the things that there are to do. The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is an overall good museum, the highlight being the actual deck chairs from the Titanic they have on display (the rescue operations were carried out from Halifax, and the bodies recovered have their own graveyard here).

Weirdly enough, the comic store near Dalhousie University had of Anthony Johnston's graphic novels. Unfortunately, out-of-town shopping centres have nearly killed off mainstream shopping in downtown Halifax, though there's one nearly-live shopping area near the university. Being a university town, Halifax is full of independent book shops, which is good.

Peggy's Cove ("The most photographed place in the Maritimes") is a little disappointing, but Lunenberg (a UNESCO world heritage site) isn't. It was in Lunenberg that we first noticed the extreme plethora of churches which seem to be a feature of Nova Scotia. They all look the same no matter what the denomination.

The Annapolis Valley is beautiful and the site of many important historic locations (including the first year-round settlement in North America and the place that changed hands between the English and French the most), and home of the university in the tiniest town imaginable (Acadia university in Wolfville). We didn't spend as much time on Cape Breton Island as I would have liked, merely taking a day to go round the Cabot Trail, including the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, which was very impressive indeed. I was nearly defeated by the bear-proof garbage cans.

Throughout the province, the people are incredibly friendly and the food is unbelievably good. Even in the sticks, their supermarket chain, Sobey's, has better selection than the Tesco I shop at weekly.

Prince Edward Island (PEI): was a disappointment. The first afternoon was great. The countryside is really cute, and Charlottetown has some good stuff: one of the best second-hand bookstores I've ever seen, some good new book shops, a great independent coffee house called Beanz, Cow's Ice Cream (best ice cream I've had in a long time along with silly t-shirts), an excellent hand made soap place (Moonsnail Soap Works, and they do mail order!), as well as lots of lovely old buildings.

Sadly, that's it. Outside Charlottetown, nothing was open, as nothing opens till mid-June. And the weather was bad. We tried driving around the island, but it all looks the same!

New Brunswick: Just say no. Although there's a lot of poverty in NS and PEI, you'd never know it to look at the place. NB, on the other hand, is the epitome of North American poverty - starting with the Obligatory Welfare Junk on the Lawn (with rusted out boats as well as cars) and including aggressive beggars nd homeless young people everywhere on the streets of Moncton (interestingly all English-speaking - Moncton has a large French population). I've since been assured that it's not just the bit of NB that we saw, it's the whole place.

In summary, spend as much time as possible in Nova Scotia, 1/2 a day in PEI and skip New Brunswick. We could have put an extra day into Cape Breton if we'd known the latter two. The only thing that stops most Canadians from moving to NS is the lack of jobs. There's limited employment in most of the province and absolutely none on Cape Breton, whose biggest export is its young people, which is sad as it's such a lovely place.