Maritimes - Day 21

I didn't sleep very well on this ferry ride, and ended up waking up tired as the sun had risen and made everything very bright.  Once everyone was up, I took the kids that wanted to up to the top of the ship to watch as it made its way into port, and we could see a cruise ship following us in.  Getting off the ship took some time, as they have to clear the one level of all cars before they can open the door to the basement and let the rest of us out.

Once out, we found some breakfast and then drove into Sydney to see their giant fiddle, as apparently Alex brought a book on the biggest things in Canada along, but hasn't been telling us where to stop.  What I didn't realize as we headed in was that the giant fiddle was located where the cruise ship was docked, and when we arrived, a security guard asked us what our purpose was.  We explained what we wanted and he let us park and take pictures, as long as we left after 10 minutes.  Then it was time to drive back into Nova Scotia.

The plan we came up with was to drive to Stellarton, where there is a museum quite like the Western Development Museum and a Jungle Jim's (a Maritime chain restaurant).  We were going to stop at the restaurant for lunch, spend a few hours at the museum and then get in to Halifax around supper time.  Unfortunately for us, we got stuck in construction traffic about 31km from Stellarton, where it took 2 hours to go about 10km. The two hours wasn't a total waste, though, as we got to watch the soap opera of "people in front of us going to the bathroom".  One lady ran 300m to a construction port-a-potty, and ran back while her husband yelled at her since the line was moving and she was driving.  Another guy ran to the bushes, then managed to drop his phone and lose his hat as he ran back to the cars.

Once out of the construction, we decided to quickly go through the museum, have an early supper at the restaurant and then drive to Halifax.  The museum was excellent and I was a bit sad that we had to rush through it.  It documented the industry and lives of people in Nova Scotia through the years, with lots of hands on stuff for the kids to do, so the younger two had a blast.  By the end of it, I was fading fast, so after supper, we drove into Halifax, found our place, made lunch plans with everyone I know in Halifax, rested for a bit, did some shopping and then called it a night.