Skip to main content

Arrival in Halifax

Whew, we made it! 

Flying out to Halifax, we had to make a connecting flight in Ottawa. Everything looked like it was going according to schedule, until we landed in Ottawa and the pilot found out that all gates were occupied because of heavy traffic. Apparently, there was a severe thunderstorm in Toronto that was causing backups at all the airports which had flights bound for Toronto. Luckily, the backups affected all flights in and out of Ottawa, so even though we ended up deplaning late, our flight to Halifax waited for us! The only downside was that we had no time to grab food.

By the time we landed in Halifax, it was around 11:00pm and we were starving. Fortunately, we found a taxi quickly and directed him to a pizza place close to our Airbnb. As we chatted with our driver along the way, he turned out to be the most hospitable host, and offered to take us to his favorite pizza joint, which was nearby. Not only that, but he gave us suggestions of other places to try, and shared stories of other travellers he had helped, including lending his car to complete strangers for a week! We enjoyed his company so much that we shared pizza with him at Sasy's in Dartmouth for a late dinner, which was loaded with toppings (cheese, pepperoni, mushrooms, and bacon). 

Note that the pizza was really ingeniously constructed - since it was so loaded with toppings, they created a dough ball (think Yorkshire pudding) in the middle of the pizza. This allowed the toppings to cling to, and rise with, the dough ball while cooking, instead of sinking the middle of the pizza! Brilliant!

After devouring the pizza, our driver generously offered to drive us to the Airbnb for no extra charge! Now I know why people talk about Maritimes and how nice the folks are - it's all true!! I'm tired, but am so appreciative of how well our first day turned out.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Happy Chinese New Year

I spent this past weekend in Toronto, sinfully stuffing my face full of Malaysian food in celebration of the new year. The image above shows a 2006 Australian Year of the Dog coin, commemorating the event quite fittingly - since the gift of money has its own part in the New Year's traditions. Now, although I may have eaten more than my share of glorious food, I also helped in the preparations of the feast! It was weird, baking with an electric mixer after having no such technology in Waterloo - I actually took a minute to stare in amazement while it was mixing the batter. Sad, I know. On Saturday night, I went to a friend's house for New Year's Eve and then later, to First Markham Place. Apparently, there was a countdown to midnight - which I'd never heard of before... and then realized why no one did it. As we counted down (in Chinese) - "sup... gou... bat... chut... lok... mmmm..." - and hit 5, a bunch of us burst out laughing. I can't really descr...

Machu Picchu to Cusco

We survived. Our day started slow with breakfast and then killing time until our train departed at 1:30pm. That's what we thought would happen.  In reality, a landslide along our train route stopped all trains. Luckily, this happened before we were scheduled to depart, so we definitely dodged disaster. We ended up waiting only 2 hours to board a train out of Aguas Calientes, but this delay was only the first of many, which was not unexpected, since no one was prepared for the landslide.  Instead of our train taking an hour to reach Ollantaytambo, it took almost 2 hours, most likely because they were only able to clear one track along the route. Then, since we had to transfer to a bus in Ollantaytambo, and there was a backlog of passengers needing transportation, we got stuck in line/traffic. It took us almost an hour to get out of Ollantaytambo, with the streets completely jammed. We finally arrived in Cusco around 8:30pm, three hours later than the originally scheduled time. ...

Reflections on Peru

Before I get too in the weeds, I think it's worth noting that after at least a decade of traveling to developed countries, Peru was bound to be a very different trip. It was our first time traveling to South America. It was the first time I was traveling with my in-laws. Also first time traveling to high altitude locations. Lots of firsts! The first thing we noticed was the transportation - we travelled on a South American airline (LATAM) for the first time, and found it to be a good experience. They automatically checked us into the flight 48 hours prior - I can only assume this is because they don't overbook their flights. On international flights, they provided blankets, pillows, and a light meal to all passengers (which is no longer part of the base fare for North American airlines). Of course, we did have that unfortunate experience on the flight back (also with LATAM) where one of us got food poisoning - so they don't get a perfect score. The great experience also doe...