I spent the weekend on a road trip with two friends. One of them and I had a union meeting in Halifax on Saturday, so he, his wife, and I hopped into their car and drove down.

Friday July 14

You know it's summer when...

The city of Charlottetown decides to tear up the streets. For some reason known only to politicians, road repair during the months of April and May, despite the lack of tourists, are [i]verboten[/b], no matter how amenable to outside work the weather may be. But the moment the tourist season starts, Prince Edward Island (where the government apparently feels that if they could just get rid of the residents, they could turn the whole place into an Anne of Green Gables theme park) gets out every bit of road repair equipment it can find and deploys it in strategic places (like the two main streets into the city from the west, which everybody who travels from the mainland across the Confederation Bridge (the main roadblock to GreenGablesLandParkWorld is the competing pressure to turning PEI into a monument to Confederation, which is singularly inapt, since PEI was the only province to back out of Confederation at the last minute back in 1867).

But I digress. We managed to get out of the city and headed towards the above-mentioned bridge. Traffic was slowed to 60km/h on the bridge, because the road-repair crews are breeding and there was an infestation of them there too. Remember, this bridge is only 3 years old.

Finally we arrived on the mainland, and headed straight for Halifax. Until we remembered that on our trip in April the gourmet restaurant at the roadside motel in Masstown (just before Truro, Nova Scotia) had been closed, so we stopped there for supper. The menu had changed (see my trip report from back then). They've dropped the German from the menu, but the food was very good; we all had the special, wild boar stew with red cabbage and spätzle. Oof, we were stuffed, and glad we didn't order the 3-course special, which included French onion soup and crèpes with fresh fruit (apples, mangoes, and such).

We sauntered across the road to the Masstown Market to investigate the offerings in the garden centre, but didn't buy any plants (mostly because the weeping mulberry I coveted wouldn't have fit in the car). I did stock up on fruit scones, raisin and lemon scones, currant and lemon scones, and blueberry and lemon danishes for our meeting tomorrow (I know my fellow participants well).

Back on the road, we pulled into Dartmouth, where we headed straight for the local outlet in the Chapters bookstore chain, where I spend an inordinate amount of money despite the fact that we don't have one where I live. Miraculously, this time all I bought was a magazine, for which I paid $1.88, since I used one of the $5 coupons Chapters regularly sends me in recognition of the fact that my disposable income has probably bought the land for at least two of their stores. My friends were amazed; last trip I struggled out the door with over $200 in books.

We continued into Halifax and checked into the Delta Halifax.

My experience at this hotel is detailed in a letter I will post as the next item in this topic.