Peggy's Cove & Our Last Day in Nova Scotia| Maritimes, Day 6

9/9/19 - Monday

The best part about staying in a hotel with no breakfast is we finally had an opportunity to go get some Tim Horton's. 

Our official breakfast was at Vandal Doughnuts, and they were soooo good! The staff member that waited on us was very nice, and it really helped set a nice tone for our morning.  We got a variety of donuts, including at least one vegan one, and we loved every one!

We took our doughnut haul and stopped at Herring Cove Provincial Park Reserve to eat and take in the view.  

From there, it was an hour's drive to Peggy's Cove, a small rural community that is the site of Peggy's Point Lighthouse. This is an active lighthouse and an iconic Canadian image. It is one of the busiest tourist attractions in the province and is a prime attraction on the Lighthouse Trail scenic drive. Peggy's Cove was a very congested area, but we wound our way up the narrow roads lined with people to arrive at the parking area for the lighthouse.  

There was even a man playing the bagpipes to add some ambiance. 

We stopped at the nearby SR 111 Peggy's Cove Memorial. On September 2, 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. All 229 people on board perished.

It offers a distant view of the lighthouse.

We stopped for a donut break before heading back to Halifax.

With our first restaurant of choice (The Stubborn Goat Gastropub) being closed for a private event, we drove on to Cheese Curds Gourmet Burgers + Poutinerie for of course, burgers and poutine. 

With our remaining time, I wanted to go back to the Halifax Harbour one last time. 

There was a BeaverTails stand there, so we got the Avalanche, which features Cheesecake spread, Skor® bits, and caramel sauce. I think this was our first time trying Skor, a chocolate toffee bar that was first marketed in the United States in 1981 and later launched in Canada in 1983. "Skör" is Swedish for "brittle". 

We saw another Cow's ice cream location here that we were originally introduced to in PEI, but we decided to try Black Bear Ice Cream instead. 

We ordered a Blue Raspberry Iceberg, a slushie with soft serve ice cream. At that point, we'd been wandering around the Harbour for about a half hour. We'd parked somewhere where we got a free half hour of parking, and we intended to pay by the parking app once our free time was up. Then we realized that we would need to load cash on the app in increments of $10, which wasn't necessary for our remaining time. Here was my grand idea, let's register on the app with a different number to get one more free half hour of parking. We can sit in the car until 5:30, activate our free time, and then parking would be free after 6 PM. Boy, what I go through to save money sometimes haha. 

I just wanted to spend the rest of our time seeing what else the Harbour had to offer. Like this ship: HMCS Sackville is a Flower-class corvette that served in the Royal Canadian Navy and later served as a civilian research vessel. She is now a museum ship located in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and the last surviving Flower-class corvette.

We walked across the Sea Bridge, a floating dock that links the Cable Wharf South Side and the Museum Wharf North. The bridge rises and falls with the tides, with ramps that move like hinges to connect the floating docks with the boardwalk. That was about the end of the line for us, so we headed on to our hotel room, which turned out to be the best place of our trip.  

The Residence Inn Halifax Dartmouth offered a HUGE, nice room. There were even packets of popcorn in the kitchen, which became our dinner.  😁 This was our first time redeeming our Marriott free night award for having the Chase Marriott card, and I definitely feel like we got good redemption value.