We woke at 4am Calgary time for breakfast after a restless night. It is hard to work out why hotels put ice and soda pop machines outside a room. These things hummed, gurgled like a flushing toilet and crunched ice all night. Still, on the bright side, we didn't need to walk far for ice. The weather, you guessed it, it was raining. Still, we must explore so we head to nearby Frog Pond to look for some fall colours. It is a little early for lots of colour in the trees and the rain didn't help, but we found a couple of nice trees and a few aquatic birds for our viewing.

 

Frog Pond is located in Sir Stanford Fleming Park. The park was donated to Halifax in 1908 by Sir Sandford Fleming, creator of Standard Time Zones. I did not realise that Standard Time was created by a Canadian, although I am sure the Scots would claim this as their own given he was born In Scotland and emigrated to Canada at age 16. The Dingle Tower, which dominates the park, was dedicated in 1912 by Sir Stanford Fleming to commemorate 150 years of representative government. After climbing to the top of the tower, we had rain-interrupted views of the North West Arm which is an inlet off the Atlantic Ocean.

 

Hoping to escape the weather, we headed to the Seaport Farmers Market on the wharves of Halifax Harbour. From the marketing hype, we were expecting lots of fruit and vegetable stalls and artisan wares. It did not live up to expectations and made Canberra's Old Bus Depot markets look exceptional. We did, however, find the Garrison craft brewery which specialises in UK-style beers and bought a six pack of two different beers, Nut Brown, a dark ale and an amber style lager. They were excellent! And, no, we did not drink them all in one sitting.

Nearby to the markets is the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, which has many old ships tied up to the wharves. Interestingly, ships and boats from Halifax played a major role in the recovery of bodies from the Titanic disaster.

 

Even wearing a rain jacket, we were thoroughly soaked and decided to seek out a shopping mall to dry off. We found one in the middle of the city but all the shops were closed. Sunday, 2pm and everything is closed. Is this Queensland?