Halifax loomed into sight a little before 8 a.m. Thursday. Our planned tour for the day was a hop-on hop-off tour of Halifax. The buses were double-deckers that ran every 30 minutes and hit most of the top tourist spots in the city.
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We hopped on a bus next to the cruise terminal mid morning, with our first hop-off at The Citadel, an old fort built (and rebuilt several times) on a hill above the city. The last rebuild was in the shape of a star. It is now run by the park service with actors portraying regimental soldiers from the mid 1800s. Here's a stock photo of the fort in relation to the rest of the city.
The morning weather, as it was in Sydney, was foggy and quite chilly, which gave a gloomy cast to the Citadel during our hour-long visit. We took a tour with one of the regimental enactors, but, sad to say, he wouldn't let me fire any of the cannons. I was able to "shoot" a few pictures.
This cannon is fired every day at exactly noon. I explained that I'd be happy to hang around until then to help, but my offer, for some reason, was turned down.
We hopped on the next bus coming through and rode the entire circuit (about 45 minutes) through the town and back to the cruise terminal. After a quick lunch onboard the ship, we hopped on a bus again and rode the short distance to the Maritime Museum. Some interesting exhibits, including artifacts from the Titanic, but it didn't really overwhelm us. We walked back to the ship on the boardwalk, which runs along the Halifax waterfront for several miles. It was a nice 30-minute walk back to the ship as the weather had turned sunny and warmer.
Georges Island (as seen from the boardwalk), named after Britain's King George II, sits in the middle of the Halifax harbor. There was a fort built on the island named Fort Charlotte after George's wife. There is also a lighthouse on the island.
I had about 10 Canadian dollars left that I wanted to get rid of since Halifax was our last stop in Canada. We walked through the Pier 21 shopping area and grabbed a nice coaster done up in some kind of maritime rope configuration.
