Our Halifax Vacation

Yesterday we headed out early to Halifax to be tourists for the day!

We first went to the Passport Office and I passed in my passport application. I’ve never had a passport but soon we’ll all need one even to get into the U.S. by land so it was time to get ‘er done!

After that we went to the Alexander Keith’s Brewery! Jeff and I both love Keith’s beer and we were hoping they would have a gift shop where we could pick up some nice beer glasses. We were in luck!

We took a tour of the brewery. It turns out it isn’t so much of the brewery anymore. It is a historical building and Alexander Keith brewed beer there since 1820! The tour was great, and put on by 4 really good actors. Throughout the tour they pretend it’s the 1800’s and they took us through a restored set of rooms. It is the oldest brewery in North America that is still brewing beer. But they are only brewing a bit of speciality beer there. All the rest of the beer is made somewhere else in the city. In a room that was mocked up like the dining room of the Keith’s house, we watched a video about the history of Alexander Keith and the brewery. It was really interesting.

Of course the best part of the tour was the free sampling! At the end of the tour we ended up in Monk’s Head Pub, an old looking pub right out of the history books. They had their traditional pale ale, their red beer, and their brand new lager to taste. I had a glass of their red. It was really good! Then they called for last call and said we could all have seconds. I downed the first and saddled up to the bar for a pale ale.

I know I had my moments in University, but I don’t think I’ve EVER downed two beers as fast as that in my life. Jeff thinks it might have been 15 minutes. I think it felt more like 5-6.

Here are some pictures:

After we stumbled out of the Stag’s Head we hit the City Deli for some lunch to sober up! :p

Then we headed up to the Citadel! I can’t remember if we hit the Citadel when I was in Halifax for vacation when I was 15. We got a walking tour there from a great tour guide. The Citadel is on a big hill in Halifax. It is the 3rd fort on the hill. This one was built by the British around 1850 and was in place to guard against landward attacks, primarily from Americans. It was built with such intimidating design, that it was never attacked.

Here are some photos from the Citadel:

After the Citadel we headed to Costco for food. You’d think a household of two wouldn’t need such bulk items, but I married a carnivore. Jeff NEEDS his meat. And the grocery stores in Antigonish do not sell good cuts of meat, and the meat they do sell is overpriced by about 200%. We’ve thought about becoming Costco members and yesterday we bit the bullet and signed up.

We even brought a cooler to bring the meat home. A lot of the stuff at Costco doesn’t seem to be any cheaper than a regular grocery store, but there were a few deals (other than the meat). We got enough papertowels and kleenex for a year at bargain prices. And they sell rawhides for the dogs that are so cheap so we got a huge bag of those. We bought a few flats of canned vegetables and tomato sauce to stock up the basement with our emergency rations. Just in case another hurricane comes to visit or some other unforeseen event.

Not sure what today has in store. These days off are flying by! We didn’t get out of bed until 10. LOVE IT!