Reviving the Blog

It's been quite a few years since I last updated this blog, but I've decided to attempt to revive it.

We've been doing a lot of travel recently, and in our travel planning, we've discovered that there isn't a lot of information out there for the age group that we fall into (40 somethings). Plus, we've been to some really interesting places over the last few years and we want to share those places with others.

So here's a quick recap of who I (we) are:

We're a couple in our 40s who love to travel. Whether locally, nationally, or internationally, we love exploring the world, seeing new places and meeting new people.

We're not budget travelers in the sense that we don't seek out the cheapest hostels while trying to live off of $50 a day. We're also not luxury travelers. We do our best to spend money wisely and if that means staying at a cheap place for a night, we'll do that. If it means checking an item off a bucket list and staying at a luxury hotel, we'll do that too (if our finances allow). This blog won't be full of advice regarding how to travel on a budget. Rather, I hope that it will inspire you to explore the world. We do visit famous tourist sites, but we also travel off the beaten path a bit and want to encourage others to step beyond the comforts of the standard touristy sites.

When we're not traveling we're running a small boutique hotel and a 501c3 non-profit cat rescue that we own in Virginia. We're also huge fans of figure skating, and by following us you'll soon realize that many of our travels are related to figure skating. We often choose places to visit based on the location of a competition. We then attend the competition and explore a new place at the same time. 

My posts will mostly be about travel. But there will also be posts about cats and figure skating as well.

This blog is still a work in progress so please be patient with me as I get the page organized and set up again.

I hope you'll be inspired to follow me and travel the world with me!

Winter Travels - Part 3 - Lexington, Virginia

Our final stop on our winter vacation was Lexington, Virginia.

This stop was a little more business than pleasure though. As I have mentioned in a few other posts, Ross and I are buying a business. This stop in Lexington was part of that process.

However, it had been a long time since I  had seen my mother and my step-father. They recently moved to Tennessee and live only a 4 hour drive away from Lexington. They asked if they could drive out to see us and spend a day with us. So of course, we said "yes"!

We spent a day with them, exploring the town and checking out the Virginia Military Institute's museum.

Lexington, Virginia is a pretty small town, but it's a town with a LOT of history and a lot of cool stuff to see.

To start, it's the birthplace of Sam Houston. Now that may not be very exciting to the average person, but after living in Texas for about 8 years, I find myself slowly starting to get as excited about Texas history as real Texans do. Sam Houston is pretty much a god in Texas. He is the man who ultimately won the Texas Revolution and then served as the president of the Independent Republic of Texas for two terms. (Fun fact: Texas Independence Day is still celebrated every year, and Texas students say the Pledge of Allegiance like the rest of the country does, but they also say a Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of Texas.)

Sam Houston is so tied into the history of Texas, that I would be willing to bet my life that most Texans don't realize that he was actually born in Virginia. (To be fair, I didn't know this either. We stumbled upon his birthplace accidentally.)

 

Our next stop was the Virginia Military Institute, which is one of two colleges in Lexington. The other one is Washington and Lee University. VMI has a lot of history connected to it - most notably, a lot of Civil War history.

I was a history major in college and concentrated on the American South. The time period of the Civil War is what I am most interested in, and I love Virginia for the fact that so much Civil War history happened there.

A few of my history classes in college were with one specific professor who liked to take us on various road trips. His trips were amazing - both educational and fun. I ended up in Virginia on two separate trips of his. I'm actually very surprised that VMI is NOT a place that he took us to. During one trip we were taken to see the grave of Traveler - Robert E. Lee's horse. Since Stonewall Jackson was so connected to Lee, I don't know how we bypassed this place on any of those trips.

So that being said, VMI is most notable for being the place where Stonewall Jackson was a professor. He taught there from 1951 until the Civil War started in 1861.  The museum on campus has an amazing display about him, that is filled with his personal belongings - which included his horse Little Sorrel. The horse's bones have been buried on the parade grounds of VMI and the hide was mounted and stands in the VMI museum.

The second most notable thing that VMI is known for is the fact that in 1864, when the south was running low on troops, the cadets at VMI were called in to the war. They are known to have fought bravely and courageously at the Battle of New Market. 

This museum is definitely worth a visit if you are ever in Lexington. It's small, yet full of incredible history and information.

 The Virginia Military Institute

 My mom and me at VMI

Cadets walking to class at VMI

 The hide of Stonewall Jackson's horse - Little Sorrel

I had to get a picture of  myself with Little Sorrel

 

 Stonewall Jackson's saddle

 The raincoat that Stonewall Jackson was wearing the night that he was shot by friendly fire (which resulted in his death a week later).

 The bullet hole from the bullet that ultimately killed Stonewall Jackson

Slightly gross, but also kind of neat - this is blood from when a doctor removed the bullet from Stonewall Jackson's arm.

 

(Slightly) Off Topic Tuesday: Finding Myself In Travel

 Some random musings about myself:

I'm 35 years old, and in many ways I feel behind a lot of my peers. I feel like I am surrounded by people who had their lives figured out at a young age. I feel like I am surrounded by people who knew what they wanted when they graduated from college and then they went out in got it.

Meanwhile, I feel like I've been meandering around, lost, for most of my life.

That's not to say that I didn't know what I wanted at all. I had a lot of ideas. I had/have a lot of interests. I just didn't know where I was going or how to get there.

I guess, ultimately I didn't know who I truly was.

It's interesting to me, that as we grow up, we are taught by the people around us - parents, teachers, society - and we grow to trust these people. While that trust isn't necessarily a bad thing, it stands to reason that it IS a very biased thing. We are taught to be who these people think we should be. We aren't taught to be who we want to be.

In my case, I was born and raised on the Jersey Shore. I grew up thinking that this was how life is supposed to be. It wasn't good. It wasn't bad. It just...was.

I went away to college in North Carolina and was hit with a major culture shock when I arrived. In a place just 10 hours away from where I grew up, I learned that my way of life wasn't the only way of life out there. Looking back, it seems like that should have been obvious to me...but it wasn't at the time. My family traveled fairly often as I was growing up, but we always traveled to the same places. I spent most of my childhood summers and winters going to Vermont. We usually took an annual trip to Washington DC. We took a few trips to Ohio to visit family and one trip to Disney World when I was 8. There were a few other random places scattered in there but aside from one trip to Texas to visit family, when I first got to college, I had never been away from the East Coast.

I'm not unintelligent. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that people lived many different lifestyles. I knew that the entire world didn't live as I did. But to see that knowledge was very eye opening for me.

My first real taste of people living differently than me, and growing up differently than me was when I went to visit my college boyfriend in Virginia over the summer one year. I knew that he had grown up in a small town. He had told me that his town had a population of 500 people. I had also grown up in a "small" town. My town had close to 30,000 in it. Clearly, what was small to me wasn't small to him.

I don't know what I was expecting to see when I got to his house. I went there with no expectations. I was simply excited to see him after being away from each other for several weeks.

I remember the drive down though. It was the first time I had ever seen the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was the first time I had ever driven through the Shenandoah Valley. I was in awe of the beauty that was surrounding me on the interstate. When I got to his house, I was really surprised. He lived in an old pre-Civil War house in a very small farming community. To unscramble all of the thoughts that ran though my head would take forever, but the gist of my thoughts were "wow I had no idea that people lived like this." By "like this", I mean that I was surprised that people lived outside of the stereotypical suburbia that I had grown up in. Again, this is something that should have seemed obvious to me, but it wasn't. I think I had always looked at people like him from a distance and thought they were weird farm kids or strange country people. I guess it just never occurred to me that someone just as normal as me, could grow up in a place so different than me. I was also surprised that this kind of lifestyle existed only 6 hours away from where I had grown up. I had driven through Virginia many times over the years (by myself and with family), but we always drove through the more populated, city areas of the state.

Fast forward to 5 years after college.

I got married to a Navy pilot and that is when my biggest travel adventures happened. We started out living in South Texas. That was culture shock #2 for me. We then moved to Jacksonville, Florida. This one wasn't a culture shock for me. For some reason, there are a lot of people from New Jersey in Florida and a lot of people from Florida in New Jersey. Plus, we were in a huge populated area. Between the people and the general lifestyle, nothing seemed abnormal about this place to me. The worst thing for me was the weather. I like having seasons and Florida is clearly lacking in that area.

After Florida we moved clear across the country to Washington state, which resulted in culture shock #3 for me.

Following that, we moved back to Texas and ended up divorced a few years later. Texas is where I am currently still living.

Throughout all of this moving, various opportunities for travel presented themselves. Cross country moves resulted in taking 3 weeks to truly enjoy every place we were driving through. Pre-deployment and post-deployment leave, and miscellaneous leave resulted in trips to places like Alaska, the Yukon Territory, Hawaii and the Canadian Rockies. During the first 25 years of my life I had only seen the states on the East Coast, and briefly Texas and California (England and France are mixed in there too). Then suddenly during the next 7 years I managed to see a large portion of Canada and ended up seeing all but 5 of the 50 states (I'm currently down to all but 4 of the states). All of this travel was really an eye opener for me. It was amazing to be able to really get out to see the country. While there are a lot of things about my past that I wish I could change, these experiences are things that I would never, ever choose to change.

So why am I writing all of this? Because as I said at the beginning of this post, it has taken me a long time to figure out who I really am. For most of my life I identified myself as a Jersey Girl.  And for what its worth, I still do. Old habits die hard. But its only been over the past few months that I have come to realize that who I always thought I was, isn't who I really am.  Yet, somehow deep down, I think I always knew this.

I identify as a Jersey Girl because its what I know. New Jersey is where I spent the majority of my life. Its where I was born and where I was raised. Life there was normal to me because its the only life that I really knew. I just assumed that I would always live the way that I was raised. It never really crossed my mind that I could or would live any differently.

Yet, the past few years have been an awakening of sorts for me. Personal reflection has let me delve into myself a bit and figure out what I really want in life. And here's the thing: I love the Jersey Shore. I always will. It will always be home to me. When Hurricane Sandy tore into the place that I loved so much, several years ago, I was devastated and continue to feel that pain. That area will always be a part of me and I'll never be able to look at it in a negative way.

But do I want to live there again? No. Absolutely not.

This past summer my fiance Ross, and I took a 6 week road trip to look at several potential businesses to buy. We searched out potential locations prior to starting the trip, but it wasn't until we were about 1/3 of the way into the trip when we realized that we had inadvertently been following the Appalachian Mountains all the way up. Without intentionally doing it, we had only chosen to look at places that were in the mountains, or near the mountains on the East Coast. We visited 23 different properties on our trip. We quickly ruled out several places and then put a lot of thought into the remaining ones.

Since this will be a business that we hope to run for a long time, we started really thinking about where we wanted to live and how we wanted to live.

For me, I really wanted to make sure that I chose the right place. Years of moving to places that I couldn't chose, due to being married to a guy in the military, made me want to really have a say in where I move to next.

So what do I like? Thinking back throughout my whole life, I reached the conclusion that the Jersey Shore is surprisingly NOT where I feel most a home. Suburbia (in anywhere America) is not where I feel at home. The shore/ocean is not a place that I enjoy very much. The places where I feel the most mentally alive are comprised of 3 things: history, space, and color.

To delve into those 3 things a bit more:

History has always been something that is important to me. That's proven by my degree in History. The American South is where I find the most fascinating history, but really, history in general makes me happy and holds my attention.

Space is something that I need, and I've only come to realize this recently.  I am tired of living next to obnoxious people. I'm tired of apartments. I'm tired of houses with small yards and nosy neighbors. I want land. I want land to spread myself out on with gardens and animals and I want to use that land the way I want to.  Not the way a neighborhood tells me that I have to.

Color is referring to the general look of the land. Washington state is a beautiful place filled with green trees and all kinds of vegetation and beautiful mountain scenery and I ended up loving it there. Texas, on the other hand, is a brown, flat dessert. I have never felt truly happy in Texas. I've complained about the brown color, endless flat land, lack of trees and the color green, for years now.

When I think back to the places where I have felt the most comfortable throughout my entire life - really think back, I surprised myself a bit with the epiphany I had. I've never truly been comfortable in suburbia. Sure, in high school, a good friend and I used to always talk about getting out of that town and doing something great with our lives, but when I said I wanted to get out, I simply meant that I wanted to go somewhere new. And "new" doesn't necessarily mean "different". I didn't know at that time, that what I really wanted was something different.

So where have I felt the most comfortable? Memories are wonderful things. And the happiest childhood memories I could recall came from 3 places:

First: Vermont. My aunt lived in a very small town when I was a little kid, and we visited her at least twice a year. She lived at the top of a hill that was on the back of a mountain. As I got a little older, she moved to an even more remote location - basically the top of her own mountain. I loved the time that I spent in Vermont. I loved her small town life. I loved that the second town that she lived in still utilized a one room schoolhouse. I loved how pretty the mountains were in Vermont. My favorite day trip when visiting her, was to the small town of Weston, which to this day, isn't even written on some maps! I used to make fun of her for living in the middle of nowhere, but that never stopped me from loving the time that I spent up there. At the time, I felt like she lived on some foreign planet. Now, I just see it as a wonderful, different way to live.

Second: Historic Houses. Two childhood memories that I can recall clearly involve old historic houses. When I was in elementary school I had a friend who lived in an old 200 year old house in town. It was right on the bay, had a widow's walk and was supposedly haunted. I thought this house was the coolest place ever. I was in second grade, yet I still appreciated the history of this house. I even remember a sleepover party where all of the other girls wanted to play games, and I just wanted to explore the house. The second memory is my dad's cousin's house in Ohio. When I was 10 we went on a trip to see some extended family, and my cousin had just bought a "new" house. It was a pre-Civil War era farmhouse, that is listed on the National Historic Register. The sad thing (to me) is that he bought it only for the land that came with it. He wanted to own his own farm, so he bought one. The history of the house didn't interest him at all, but this place fascinated me! Even as a 10 year old I found it so discouraging that he didn't even know the history of the house, and he didn't care. After a week of exploring the house and the old barn that came with it, I decided then and there that I would restore an old house one day. I decided that at 10 years old and I haven't changed my mind yet. Restoring an old historic house is still something on my bucket list.

Third: Camp. I started going to a sleep away girl scout camp when I was 11 years old. It was up in the mountains of northwestern New Jersey and it was absolutely beautiful up there. I was a camper there until I was 15 and then at age 16, I started working as a counselor there. When I was 19, I spent my last summer there, but it was only my last because I needed a summer job that paid more. If I had a choice, I would have worked there forever. Being up in those mountains, at that camp, and canoeing on the Delaware River as part of one of the camp's programs, was something that I loved and something that I have always treasured and will continue to treasure for the rest of my life. I felt at peace up there. I loved being secluded from the "real world" for several weeks each summer. One thing that keeps popping into my head right now is a campfire song that we used to sing. It's called Moon on the Meadow and one of the lines is "People in cities don't understand, falling in love with the land." Even as a camper there, that line always stood out to me because its the truth. We always sang the song at the last night campfire of each session and that line always brought tears to my eyes, even as a kid. I always identified myself as a city person, yet THAT line, and my emotional reaction to that line, shows me now, that I'm not a city person. I thought that I was, but cities aren't where I feel the most at home. Mountains give me that feeling instead.

Aside from childhood, some of my most recent favorite memories (i.e. "places where I felt the most comfortable") include, Olympic National Park in Washington state, The Columbia River Gorge between Washington and Oregon, the view of Mt Baker that I could see daily from my home on Whidbey Island in Washington, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Canadian Rockies, Alaska, driving the Alaska Highway in the Yukon Territory and seeing the beautiful mountain views, driving the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina and Virginia, Yosemite National Park...and so on. Basically mountains and land is where I feel comfortable and mentally happy. I don't feel that way in the middle of a city.

The irony here is that Ross and I have settled on a location that we are currently in negotiations with to purchase. And where is it? Right back in the same area where I had my first taste of "the rest of the world". Its in a small town in Virginia, right down the road from where that old boyfriend used to live. We even found our perfect house (pre-Civil War in need of restoration), right on his old street.  While the house is unlikely to work out, the business is looking promising right now.

I've been pondering this situation because in a way, I feel like I've come full circle in this "finding myself" game. I used to make fun of him when we were together. I don't recall ever making fun of the area that he introduced me too. I loved the history of the area and I loved the mountains and the valley area, and if my memories are correct, I always told him that. But I definitely picked on him for being a "country boy". I never picked on him to be intentionally mean, but I definitely mocked his small town, country lifestyle. I never imagined that I would want to live that way. Yet here I am, about 13 years after college, about to close a real estate deal in that exact same location that I once thought I could never live in. If you had talked to me a year ago, 5 years ago or 10 years ago, I never would have imagined that I might be living there one day. The truth is that traveling has opened my eyes to who I really am. I don't know if I would have reached these conclusions without so much traveling. In the end, I'll still be fairly close to "home". I like the East Coast better than the West Coast and I probably always will. But the city girl that I once was? It turns out that she never existed in the first place.

Some pictures of my adventures:

 

Devil's Tower, Wyoming

 

 Badlands National Park, South Dakota

 

Old Faithful at Yellowstone National Park

 

 Highest Point on a drive through the Beartooth Mountains in Montana and Wyoming

 Marymere Falls in Olympic National Park, Washington state

 Some standard Washington driftwood on 3rd Beach in LaPush

 Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in Mt. Vernon, Washington state

 Mt. St. Helens

 Sunset over the Columbia River Gorge - between Oregon and Washington

 Multnomah Falls in Oregon

 Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies - in April

 Cascades National Park in Washington state

 Tunnel Mountain in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

 Lake Agnes - high above Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies

 view of Mt Rainer from Whidbey Island, Washington

 The Yukon Territory

The other side of the Yukon Territory - I took pictures of both signs because the first one is where I entered the territory, but the second one has beautiful snowy mountains behind it.

 A lynx that we saw on the side of the road while we drove through the Yukon Territory

 A frozen lake outside of Anchorage, Alaska

 The Arctic Circle - off the Dalton Highway in Alaska

 Crater Lake National Park, Oregon

 view from Anacortes - just north of Whidbey Island, Washington

 inside an old burned out tree in Stanley Park, Vancouver, British Columbia

Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah

 Long House, Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado

A day hike on Mt Rainer

 

Mt Rainer, Washington

Third Beach, La Push, Washington

 

  Deception Pass, Whidbey Island, Washington

Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau, Alaska

 

Kluane National Park, Yukon Territory, Canada

The Grand Canyon

 

Stanislaus National Forest, California

Winter Travels - Part 2 - Halifax, Nova Scotia

Halifax. There's so much to say about Halifax! It is truly one of the most interesting cities I have ever traveled to.

What started as a trip to see the 2016 Canadian National Figure Skating Championships turned into an amazing week of learning and fun.

As an avid figure skating fan, I try to make it to the Canadian Championships every year (Canada has great skaters. Their National Championships cost less to attend than the U.S Championships. And its a chance to explore more of a country that I love.) And since a different city hosts the championships each year, it is also an opportunity to take a nice winter vacation. This past year, Halifax, Nova Scotia hosted the competition so I started planning a trip. After our brief stop in the Buffalo/Niagara Region, we were on our way to Nova Scotia!

I try to be prepared when I go on vacations. I like to research the location I'm going to so I can find out what's open and what isn't (unfortunately in the winter you are somewhat limited on things to do in certain areas of Canada), and so I can get a general idea of where everything is located in relation to where we will be staying. But even with all the research I had done before the trip, I wasn't prepared for just how much I would enjoy Halifax.

Halifax turned out to be a pleasant surprise. We arrived in the city armed with a list of things that we wanted to see and do, but I wasn't prepared to be as "wowed" by the city as I was. This is a city that is FULL of history that I never knew about. I've always loved history, and while I understand that growing up in America means that I mainly learned American history, I was still surprised at how little I knew about Halifax history. Some of the historical events that took place there are such huge and significant events (keep reading for info about Halifax's connection to the Titanic) that I find it sad that we never learned about them in America. Some of the events are even tied to the United States in a way (keep reading for info about the Halifax Explosion), yet we still never learned about them.

So consider yourself lucky ;-) that not only are you reading a blog written by someone who loves to travel, but you're also reading a blog written by someone who loves history. So here comes the history lesson from me!

First though, here's a taste of what it felt like in Halifax when we were there. I love my winter vacations. I love snow (living in Texas makes me really miss snow) and I love cold weather. However, our first few days in Halifax had me regretting the fact that I had been wishing for a real winter! When it feels like -3 degrees F outside...thats a little too cold, even for me! This is what our first few days were like (and yes that is in Fahrenheit, not Celsius):

The first thing we visited was the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. The United States had Ellis Island. Canada had Pier 21. An often overlooked fact in American history classes is that America was not the only country that had masses of immigrants coming in to it. I feel like we, as Americans, have been taught about how great America is and we are made to think that no other country can possibly be better than us...or even similar to us. As much as I love my country, I also find this upsetting. It's one thing to have national pride. Its another thing to overlook the fact that there are plenty of other great countries out there. Canada is right above us, yet I never once learned about the fact that Canada is a huge melting pot of cultures too. Thankfully, a trip to Canada is what finally taught me the facts that I never learned about the Great White North in school.

It turns out that Canada had a large number of immigrants too. And they were all processed through Pier 21 in the same way that immigrants were processed through Ellis Island.

When we went to the museum it was suggested to us that we go on a tour that was about to start. We had initially just wanted to look around by ourselves, but the tour was really pushed so we agreed to go on it (We ended up being the only people who opted to take that particular tour which turned out to be great). We are both VERY glad that we took the tour. It was led by a museum volunteer named George Zwaagstra, a Dutch immigrant who was processed through Pier 21 in the early 1950s. For more information about this fascinating man, you can simply google his name and several videos and articles will come up. In the meantime though here are two short pieces about him:
George Zwaagstra 1
George Zwaagstra 2

Mr. Zwaagstra took us on what was supposed to be a 30 minute tour and talk. It ended up lasting for over an hour, and it was one of the best history tours I have ever been on. He took us around the museum, which is in the original Pier 21. Even the original doors that immigrants walked through after getting off of their ships are still there. He told us about his own personal experience of immigrating - everything from the ship ride over, to being processed at the pier, to finally being allowed into the country. He had his original passport and travel stamps to show us. He had pictures to show us of his personal experience. He even pointed out some of his personal belongings that he had donated to the museum for their immigration displays. Reading about this kind of stuff is interesting. But hearing it from the mouth of someone who actually experienced it is beyond fascinating and I truly feel honored that we had the chance to listen to this wonderful man's story. Without a doubt, if you ever go to Halifax, go to Pier 21. And if you have the chance to take one of Mr. Zwaagstra's tours - take advantage of it. You won't regret it. Click here for my personal review of Pier 21.

 George Zwaagstra showing us a picture of the ship that he came over to Canada on.

George Zwaagstra showing Ross the view of Halifax Harbour, and talking about his immigration experience. The doors in this picture are the original doors that immigrants walked through and it was fascinating to hear this man tell us about how he once walked through these very doors as an immigrant.

The next fascinating piece of history that we learned about was the Halifax Explosion. The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic seemed like an obvious "must see"...seeing as how we were in the heart of the Maritime Provinces. 

The Halifax Explosion was probably the most interesting display in the museum, mainly because this was a massive event, and I had never heard about it. This was the largest man made explosion in the pre-atomic era. It killed close to 2000 people, injured 9000 more, and destroyed the entire north section of the city of Halifax. As we worked our way through the displays and information about this huge explosion, Ross and I wondered more and more, "How have we never heard of this before?" This wasn't some small little explosion. It was massive. 

The gist of it is that on December 6, 1917 two ships collided in Halifax Harbour. One of those ships was completely packed full of multiple types of explosives - including TNT, gasoline, and gun powder. A fire started first, but within minutes the explosives on the ship did exactly what they were meant to do. The force of the explosion caused a piece of one of the ship's anchors to be thrown through the air, and eventually land over two miles away.

I took some pictures in the museum but due to the glare of the light, most didn't come out very well. I HIGHLY recommend googling "Halifax Explosion" just to see pictures of the devastation it caused. It forever changed life in Halifax, and is a piece of history that deserves a lot more recognition than it gets (at least in the United States).

As for the connection to American history - as soon as Boston heard about the explosion, the city dispatched volunteers to Halifax. They arrived on December 8th to help. To this day, the Christmas tree that is lit in Boston Common every year is an annual gift from the province of Nova Scotia as continuing thanks for their help after the explosion. Personally, I really found that interesting, and while its possible that Boston school children are taught that piece of history, it seems like something worth mentioning as a piece of American/Canadian history in general.

 A clock that was found in the rubble that had stopped at the exact time of the explosion.

 Picture of the Halifax Explosion

 Boston's official city Christmas tree is a gift from Nova Scotia each year.

The Halifax Explosion memorial. This is the actual piece of anchor that was thrown 2 and a half miles away from the explosion. The memorial is in the spot where the anchor landed.

And finally, the piece of history that I thought was the most interesting, is the connection that Halifax has to the Titanic. The story of the Titanic is such an iconic piece of history, and I find it odd that I never learned this particular piece of history about it. I knew the story of the Carpathia arriving to help the survivors. I knew that Carpathia then took the survivors to a dock in New York City. I knew that about 1500 people died. Beyond that though, I knew nothing about the people who had died. For some reason, history likes to leave out that part. I assume its because people don't like to talk about death as much as they do life. And while that's understandable, sometimes there is a lot to be learned from death. Sometimes there are interesting stories to tell.

So while New York City was processing the survivors, what was happening to the dead passengers? It turns out that Halifax was the city that ended up being in charge of recovering the dead bodies. Three ships were sent out from Halifax, and those ships recovered 337 bodies - the only bodies that were ever recovered. 209 bodies were brought back to Halifax, and the others were buried at sea. Once in Halifax, the bodies were carefully catalogued so that family members could identify their loved ones. It was done in a way that is still used in morgues today. 

Of the 209 bodies brought back to Halifax, 59 of them were claimed and shipped home to relatives. The rest were buried in three cemeteries in Halifax. The largest number of them were buried at a place called Fairview Lawn Cemetery. They have their own section of the cemetery and it is truly a moving place to visit. 

Being able to see the graves of the people who died on the Titanic caused the whole tragedy to be brought to life for me - in a sense. Seeing this stuff in movies or documentaries, or reading about it in a book just doesn't have the same effect that seeing the grave sites in person. It made it seem more real to me. 

Check out these pictures for some more information about Halifax and the Titanic:

 An actual deck chair from the Titanic. The crews on the ships that were sent to recover bodies collected a lot of "souvenirs"  at the site of the sinking. This wasn't done to disrespect any of the victims. Instead, sailors believed that it was good luck to collect objects from shipwrecks. 

 A replica deck chair in the Maritime Museum. It is there for people to sit in to see what it would have been like to sit in one on the Titanic (and it wasn't as comfortable as one might have assumed).

Some "souvenirs" from the Titanic. These were picked out of the water and taken home with the crews of the ships that came to recover bodies. As mentioned above, this wasn't done to disrespect the tragedy. It was actually considered to be respectful of the dead. Some items were kept on the ships that found them and looked at as a type of good luck. If you zoom in on the picture there is information about this particular cutting board. Some objects (like cutting boards or other large pieces of wood) were carved and cut up and used to make other objects out of them. This cutting board has remained in its original state though.
 

 A piece of the life jacket that is believed to be the one worn by John Jacob Astor.

Info about the above life jacket
 

The Titanic Graves in Fairview Lawn Cemetery. Without a good camera its hard to capture a good picture of this area. But if you look closely, there are three lines of graves and they are curved in a way that creates the image of a bow of a ship.
 

 One of the unknowns buried at Fairview Lawn Cemetery

Some families paid to have larger headstones for their loved ones. Clicking on the pictures to zoom in will let you read the various things that are written on these larger stones.
 

 

 

  

This is the grave of an unknown child that was pulled from the water. When crews from Halifax went out to recover bodies, they recovered the body of one child - who was around 2 years old. The child went unclaimed and unidentified so when he was buried, the crew members pooled their money together to give this boy a nicer headstone. For years people tried to identify this boy, and he was misidentified at least once. Modern day technology and DNA testing finally figured out this child's true identity just a few years ago. However, the original headstone still stands at his grave.

Moving on from the Titanic, on a much happier note, we spent one day at the famous Peggy's Cove Lighthouse. Actually, I shouldn't say that we spent a day there. We planned to spend a day in the area but with the below freezing temperatures and the below 0degrees F windchill, we only spent about an hour there. It was worth it though. 

Peggy's Cove is one of the most famous photographed lighthouses in the world. Visiting it has made me realize that there is probably never a good time to visit. In the summer hundreds and hundreds of tourists flock to the small town that its in. A quick Google search will show you hundreds of pictures of the lighthouse with people in the pictures. It seems completely impossible to get a picture of JUST the lighthouse in the summer. So we thought we were being smart by visiting in the winter. It turns out that that also isn't the greatest idea because it is one of the windiest places in Nova Scotia. I've done a lot of winter traveling and I can honestly say that I think this is, by far, the coldest I have ever been. But...we got our picture by a famous landmark so I suppose it was worth it! (And for the record, we were NOT the only people crazy enough to visit in the middle of winter. There were at least 3 other crazy people there too!)

 

 

Since we ended up not spending an entire day at Peggy's Cove, we took this day to go back to our hotel room and relax a bit. We stayed at the Lord Nelson Hotel and had an...interesting....experience.

 I love historic old hotels so when I was planning this trip and found the Lord Nelson, I knew we had to stay there. It turns out that we had some problems during the first few days of our stay, and those problems resulted in us being moved to 4 different rooms over the course of 3 days. I was at the point where I was starting to get annoyed and was NOT enjoying our stay, but then the absolutely wonderful management saved the experience for us.  

For what its worth, I know that things can go wrong and that mistakes can be made. I'm pretty forgiving of these kinds of things, as long as an effort is made to correct the problems. But if I'm paying close to $200 a night for a hotel room and no one seems to care that things are going badly, then I'm not going to be happy. 

After our experience though, I can say without a doubt, that I would recommend the Lord Nelson Hotel to anyone who is visiting Halifax. Not only were the staff beyond friendly, but they were quick to solve all of the problems that we had, and they did so with smiles on their faces. Even so, while I was happy with the staff, the experience was still disappointing and was leading to me not liking the hotel in general. 

Then we came back from our Peggy's Cove adventure. While we were getting settled into our 4th room, someone knocked at the door. We were beyond surprised when we found a guy standing there with a bottle of wine, a personal card from the front desk, and an offer of a free movie and free breakfast. The very fact that the staff dealt with all of the problems to begin with, and dealt with them in the correct way, is what made this surprising to us. We had never gotten loud and obnoxious to anyone. We didn't make any demands other than what was necessary (i.e. one of our rooms had no heat - and heat was necessary). We were satisfied with the way everything was handled. So to bring us a free bottle of wine, a free breakfast voucher and a free movie, along with a handwritten card is so far above and beyond anything that we would have expected. It was the above and beyond from the staff that made me change my mind about our stay there. Stuff happens. Things go wrong. But how you deal with that stuff is what makes all of the difference. I can say that the dedication from the hotel staff to make our stay a great stay is why I will absolutely stay there again if I am ever back in Halifax.  

Click here for my personal review of the Lord Nelson Hotel.