green gables or bust: July 31, Day 1

well lets see how this goes tonight. After an hr trip to Calgary (yes I do realize that is the wrong way to go from SK to the east coast but hey I"m not flying the plane) so a quick stop in Calgary then approx 5 hrs and we arrived in Halifax about 6:15 in the morning for those of you back in SK that is about 3:15 in the morning with next to no sleep we were pretty chipper and off to our hotel arriving at 7 am means no room is ready but they do store the luggage and better yet they give you a coupon for a full buffet breakfast. mmmm mmm full and happy again we were off. Our hotel is only a 2 minute walk from the board walk so life is good. Being so early (around 8) there is hardly anyone on the board walk giving us lots of time to be tourists. Unfortunately the stores weren't open yet either or is that fortunately hmmm not sure on that. We got to the Harbor Hopper tours and got booked in for the 10 a.m. hop, which left us about half an hour to amuse ourselves by this time the souvenir store was open so we did a quick run thru to pick out what we had to go back to buy, then off to our bus/boat for the tour, these are pretty cool machines we started our tour thru the main areas in Halifax with some history, places to see and shop then we went for a splash in the ocean a quick tour around the harbor and we were back on land and back to our starting point. Back to the stores. Halifax has beautiful pewter and the only glass blown crystal in the country. Its really quite the place as you can watch them make the crystal (beer glasses while we were there) absolutely beautiful pieces but I could definitely hear moms voice in my head say BE CAREFUL. By this time the boardwalk is getting pretty busy and we turn around to go the other way to head toward Pier 21 were so many immigrants have come thru on their arrival to Canada. My friend checks on relatives but decides they would have arrived before Pier 21 opened. We take a tour of the museum and find out a couple of ladies on our tour were among the thousands who came thru here. It was a pretty interesting tour and we had the opportunity to try try on a few period costumes and play around. It is also attached to a huge craft sale area...lots of neat things. We headed back to our hotel and got our room. I was completely exhausted, hot and yes crabby. I just laid on the bed trying to sleep while one friend tried to quietly get her stuff organized. I thought the room was extremely hot and couldn't sleep but couldn't move after a good 1/2 hr maybe longer I finally got my second wind and cooled down, I discover the room was quite cool and had been since we got there, but to me it had been hot, I think i may have got a touch of heat stroke(it was around 30 outside ),that combined with no sleep apparently messed with my internal heating, weird but after a shower I was feeling normal and the major crabbyness was gone. By this time it was nearing supper time so after a bit of wandering around we come accross this nice little pub which happens to be beside where the Alexander Keith brewery tour is. People from Halifax celebrate Alexanders birthday each year which is October 5 and the store has a count down calendar. Supper at the Red Stag was delish, and the pale ale was perfect. A lovely end to our first day of wandering. Upon arriving back to the Westin I worked on frustrating myself with my blog while my friends went swimming then off to bed for a relatively good sleep(turns out someone snores, not mentioning any names but for someone who sleeps wtih a quiet dog its like sleeping next to a freight train and thats' it for day one, I think I was up for something like 36-37 hrs with a little napping on the

Tourist stuff