Local Guide To Halifax Nova Scotia

I'm Meggan, and I'm Jenn and you're listening to the Travel Mug Podcast. Every episode we talk about travel destinations, interesting trivia, and even some travel fails. Let's dive into today's episode, don't forget your travel mug! Welcome to another episode of the Travel Mug Podcast, today it's our first episode talking about an actual destination and we thought we should start with the city that we both live in; Halifax Nova Scotia. Yes we'll be chatting about Halifax; what there is to do here, our favorite places to eat and drink, some hidden gems, and also some fun facts. So we thought that we should start with things that you should know about Halifax either before you come here or things that you should know about Halifax because you live here and you should probably just know them. But Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia um and it's the biggest city in Nova Scotia as well. It's known to the locals as HRM or the Halifax Regional Municipality and that encompasses more than just the downtown peninsula, includes Halifax, Dartmouth, Bedford, and like Halifax County as a whole is actually quite big. Our population is roughly 406 000 which is I think almost half of Nova Scotia's general population? Yeah I think so as well. Yeah, Halifax is located within the traditional ancestral lands of the Mi'kmaq Indigenous Peoples who have been living on this land since the 1400s and 1500s and it was incorporated by European settlers in 1749. We're also a big university town and we have three major universities as well as community colleges, which vastly increases our population every September. Anyone who tries to rent an apartment knows that and it definitely has a big cultural influence on Halifax as well. Definitely, we also have a really big military presence and it does create a lot of jobs here in the city and Nova Scotia in general and we also have the Halifax Shipyard which is another really big generator for local jobs. Um one thing Halifax is really big on is festivals. Now again most of these do happen in the summer months which of course is when we are going to recommend that you visit but some of the festivals include the Busker Festival, The International Tattoo, the Jazz Festival, Greekfest, Multicultural Festival, Tall Ships. We usually have a large Canada Day celebration as well. It is the year of the pandemic so this year it is going to be virtual and really we're also really happy to say that our Pride Festival/ Pride Parade is one of the largest in Canada and is definitely the largest in Atlantic Canada so again something we're definitely proud of. Tourism as you can imagine is incredibly important to the Halifax area. It's a popular destination summer like I just mentioned and most summers we actually see, this this is such a crazy number, we actually see between 120 and 150 cruise ships per season. I had no idea!

I know! I work- my day job is actually downtown and oftentimes at lunch I'm out for walks and the seas of people literally is it's it's enormous I mean that's - and some of these ships are two and three and four a day it's pretty crazy. We mentioned already about it being a multicultural city um there is a very diverse food scene and we have over 200 bars and restaurants with a wide variety of world cuisines so regardless of what your taste buds desire, I'm pretty sure you can find it here at some point. and again I'd just like to reiterate that the best months to visit are definitely between July and October for the best weather. Definitely I think that'll be obvious when we start this topic which is the classic things to do in Halifax because a lot of them are outside. Indeed. So the first stop on our classic tour of Halifax is the Public Gardens which was established in 1867 and it's such a nice park in the middle of the city. It's like a Victorian era gardens, it has a beautiful gazebo, I love walking around there. Yeah it's one of my favorite places too it's great for relaxing and reading, people go there oftentimes for weddings and graduations and proms to have pictures taken and just a little personal note it was one of the stops on mine and Peter's first dates, somewhere that definitely holds a place in my heart as well and honestly it's just a beautiful place to go and stroll around. Definitely yeah. The next stop on the tour is the Halifax Citadel, it is a National Historic Site much like the Public Gardens um one of the fun things about the citadel is the daily cannon that goes off at noon. When I first started working downtown I was like what is happening, but it happens every single day and tourists are usually the exact same way because they have no idea obviously what's going on. um it's in a strategic spot it looks over the city which is really important or was really important for protection during war time hopefully we don't have to worry about that again anytime soon, and it's made in the distinctive shape of a star if you were to look at it from above and it really still does watch over the city but now it's just more of a storyteller of the past more than anything have you ever uh gone and done a tour there? Yes I love the Citadel so we've gone and done kind of the regular day tour; looked around there's like a military museum and lots of people dressed up and doing like reenactments and and military reenactments and stuff like that we've also gone in the evening in the summer and into the fall they do a ghost tour which is really fun, I definitely recommend the ghost tour they take you down into like the prison cells and they walk around and kind of talk about different ghost stories things people have seen, kind of creepy Halifax, and it's really really fun I definitely recommend the daytime but the nighttime ghost tour is highly recommended. I didn't know that, that actually sounds like something that we could do this summer that I have, I've not done. And I think you know another interesting aspect is it is a lot of hills so people do go there as well to sort of lay out in the sun and have picnics so if you are staying downtown and you don't want to eat at a restaurant you could go grab some food and go up to the hill and the side that does face the waterfront also has our large town clock so it's also really scenic and iconic for photos as well so it's just a great spot overall obviously with a lot of to do in the day and the evening. Yeah you definitely get really good views of the city and the Harbor front up there too. Yeah. So the next stop is classic-classic Halifax you can't come to Halifax without doing this and this is our waterfront, the historic properties and the seaport market all in one because it's all along one boardwalk which is one of the world's longest boardwalks, fun fact, which we're getting to later but I brought it in here now. I like it, I like it. it's so this long board walk it's about three kilometres it has tons of space it has food shacks, it has delicious ice cream stands highly recommend, lots of restaurants tons of things to do down there. Yeah for sure I love it down there like I said I usually pre-pandemic work down there going out for lunch uh on a walk only but sometimes the ice cream shacks did draw me in it's also a really great place to catch the ferry to Dartmouth i think it's like a dollar fifty at this point if I recall correctly. It's great way to get over to that side of the water and there's also the harbor hopper city tour which is very insightful for Halifax history, goes over land and sea in a refurbished military vehicle and I did hear today actually um that for the Summer of 2020 they're actually going to be giving deals to people on the harbor hopper if you are from Atlantic Canada so it's just sort of one of those things where we're going to be travelling locally as we know so they're actually going to give a bit of an incentive for people to actually come and do the harbor hopper. Yeah I've actually never done it so it is on our uh it's on our summer 2020 bucket list. It definitely should be. Yeah I also wanted to mention I love the shops in the historic properties, I love wandering around there and there's just lots of great like little local like local clothing local crafts all kinds of really really cool stuff down there yeah and at the opposite end of the historic properties is the seaport market like we mentioned so the big day there is Saturday lots of local crafts produce and food vendors so if you are in the city - it's open Sundays and throughout the week too but at a very limited level Saturday is definitely the big day with all the vendors out and it is definitely something to behold even if you don't need any fresh produce obviously if you're just visiting Halifax you won't need any carrots but um you can just go there to have lunch or a coffee and breakfast it's a really really interesting spot and there's great seating outside there too so you can just grab a bite to eat or coffee and go out and sit outside of the market it's quite lovely yeah it's a really fun atmosphere like usually there's someone playing live music and you can kind of like grab a coffee and grab some pastries or or whatever and and just kind of take it all in it is really fun. Yeah I like it there for sure also down sort of in the south end of Halifax which is sort of where the seaport market takes you along the boardwalk as well is Point Pleasant Park it is a municipal park it's really great for walks you can take your dog there for designated areas for walking on leash. Lots of ocean views one thing that unfortunately did happen to point pleasant is during hurricane Juan in 2003, I can't remember the percentage of trees but it was a really large percentage of the trees were actually lost there so it was a bit heartbreaking for locals to visit um during that time but it is a really great walk. I know that we have a marathon in the city each year generally in May it actually goes through the park and one of the great things that I've never done um is Shakespeare By The Sea theatre company actually performs within the park during summer months have you ever done that? I haven't actually oh my goodness you gotta yeah we were supposed to go one year on our wedding anniversary and unfortunately it rained so we never got to do it um but it is something that I'm really really interested in doing at some point so maybe this summer if they if they do have performances we'll have to check on that. Yes definitely that goes back to our first episode tips check and see if things are open. Yes I shall do that. I think I'll take my own tip thank you. Yes perfect, so our next stop is the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. There is no distinguishing Halifax from our maritime history, it is so so intertwined so the Maritime Museum gives you an idea of how Halifax has grown with the boats that we've built here and um actually fun fact we have a really big connection to the Titanic because a lot of people were brought here so you can actually find things that were floating in the water off of the Titanic at the museum which is really really cool. Yeah definitely and the great thing about the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic it's also along the boardwalk that we just mentioned Halifax's downtown core is pretty compact so you can definitely walk it and the museum that we're mentioning is right along there it also has some artifacts and information and history about the Halifax explosion um which we will reference later as well but it just really gives the evolution of sea vessels and a really good understanding of our important relationship with the sea um it's an interesting place to go. I know museums aren't everybody's thing and oftentimes they're not they're not mine actually I have been to like the Louvre and some of the bigger museums in the world but it's not always my thing but this one actually is a really great stop to sort of understand Halifax and how and how we have come to be what we are today. Definitely. Yeah now as we sort of move away from the waterfront for just a moment, the Halifax Central Library up on Spring garden Road it's a brand new building um have you been yet Jenn? I have I love that library. It's beautiful, so it's received a lot of accolades for its architecture and it's been described as a new cultural locus so offering many community facilities including a 300 seat auditorium there's some great cafes in there there's a roof you can actually go up to and go outside there's lots of great seats to do some reading and look out the big picture windows and then it's also a great place for community um so it's definitely somewhere that you know you could actually go if you're an architecture buff or if you actually just want to go and grab a coffee and head to the roof and have a really great look over the city but I definitely recommend at least taking a picture from the outside but of course highly recommend going in as well. Yeah it's something like a library or is something that people are like oh like why would I go- Right. Go to library but it's the architecture is really cool and inside if you're a Harry Potter fan it's almost like a modern Hogwarts the way the stairs are they're really really cool and I do like just kind of grabbing a coffee and and checking out the views from the roof too. Definitely. So while you're on Spring Garden checking out the library, Spring Garden is a huge shopping street in our city, there's tons of cafes there's tons of restaurants, higher-end shops, it's close to the library, well the library's on spring garden and then the public gardens is close as well and it's just kind of a fun street to just stroll down and even just window shop you don't even have to really shop. No no definitely, it's sort of you know lots of like colors of Halifax essentially so the library the public gardens the shopping the cafes it's a really fun street um and and it's usually pretty busy but if you are visiting Halifax it's a can't miss for sure, and then not too far from there honestly is the Halifax commons, so maybe after you stroll Spring Garden you might want to get away from it all for a moment and the Halifax Commons is actually a really large open green space in Halifax so again somewhere you can go and take a blanket have a picnic there's a playground there there's an actual skate park and there's also some baseball fields in the summer when there is organized sports that is really popular there too or just lounge in the sun play some frisbee chill it's it's a really great spot if you are looking for an afternoon again i'm sure there's a coffee shop nearby so grab a coffee or go have a little picnic it's it's a fun spot and there's a big fountain in the middle of that as well that's it that's uh that's a good spot yeah they actually some in the before times before kobed would have concerts there as well so yes if you're listening to this in the future post covid maybe check and see if there's a cool concert going on while you're here too yeah no definitely and the same goes for citadel hill now that you mentioned that as well sometimes there's concerts on citadel hill too so um there's definitely outside concert venues and the commons are one of those too yeah the last stop on our classics tour is the alexander keith's brewery tour i've never done this have you done it either no my husband mentioned it because he's like um alexander keith is a pretty big name in the you know alcohol industry in the beer world and it's here right from here so um it's actually i have been in the building it's a really cool historic building like even if you're not into the beer which i'm not the the building is worth going into to check out but they also do a brewery tour where they show you like how they make the beer and tastings and stuff like that yeah definitely there's a shop and you can of course buy their wares as well so if that is of interest to you it's definitely a great stop and a lot of people do know of alexander keith and it's right here in halifax so you might as well stop by and have a tour while you're in town yeah if you're a fan you should definitely check it out exactly now we're going to take a little break from the classic tour of halifax we just want to take a moment to get to one of my favorite activities which is having a drink and having something to eat um i do want to mention of course before we get into some of these that these are just a few options among many and what we're going to sort of talk about maybe is our favorites a little bit and again i probably have more favorites than this too but there's only just so much time here um but the food scene is really vast there's a lot of choices and new restaurants honestly are popping up all the time so jen what are a couple of your favorites yeah so my favorite favorite is piato which is downtown south end it's a pizza like an artisan pizza shop oh it's so good i'm drooling thinking about it but actually two of their pizzas are certified by like italy um the napoleon i don't know what they're called the napoleon pizza commission or we'll go with that that sounds that sounds italian something like that you know they can't the people from italy came over and certified the pizza like yes you're making this in the traditional way and wow so delicious it's two of them that are certified and then they have kind of other sort of offbeat kind of pizza toppings that are also fantastically delicious well it is the first place i had pear on pizza i'm not gonna lie and it was delicious i i would actually highly recommend this spot too good choice what else you got my second uh favor i guess i'm not really going to order favorites but um i love the stubborn goat i love their menu i love their um kind of focus on like small shareable plates it's not exactly like a tapas place but it kind of like leans towards that a bit they do have bigger plates as well but i love going there and just kind of sharing some stuff they also have a beer garden on the waterfront that's kind of serves similar dishes and i i love checking them out i also love chain yard cider so it that's a local card cider maker to have a restaurant there their food is super super delicious and their cider is super super delicious yes you know get a tasting flight there you definitely won't be disappointed yeah i'm on board with that one we went once and had like the world's most delicious french fries that's literally all we got but they were like they were dressed up with like pesto and some other things and they were so good i love them oh good my my last favorite on the list is lot six it has uh it's a really really fun place to go for a drink it has a really cool atrium it's super instagramable if i do say so and it's just it's got a lot of different cocktails the food's also really good there too awesome i think those are all awesome great choices and i think i've never been to lot six so the other the other ones i've been there so that's a really great suggestion even for me so i've never been yeah um so a couple of my favorites and again this does not include everything and again these are in no particular order but one that came to mind was the good robot it is on roby street in halifax it is a brewery but they also have really delicious food and the vibe there is it's cool we'd love to sit at the bar they have sort of like bucket seats it looks like from old cars i swear and we love to sort of sit in those we have some beer the food menu has changed but it's still delicious it's being made in-house now they had another company that was in there making their food and now it's in-house and it's still delicious i i can't recommend it enough and they have a lot of options they don't eat meat so they do have really great options which is important for me which leads into my another one of my favorites it's the wild leek it is on windsor street and it has uh it's a vegan restaurant um and we'll talk about sort of halifax's famous food later but they have recreated it at the wild leak i will just keep you in suspense for a moment but honestly and and i know you know there are places you know people shy away from vegan food and and whatnot i have not had a bad meal there ever and my husband is not vegan or vegetarian i'm vegetarian but he he loves it too like it's it's for people of all of all tastes so even if you have someone in your group that is vegetarian i swear everybody could get a great meal there so i definitely recommend that um and then if you are in the spring garden road area one of the other places i wanted to talk about is the black sheep they are really great with their cocktails and their brunch is amazing a few less options for non-meat eaters but their food is extraordinary so i would definitely recommend it's kind of a little pathway to get in you don't know if you're in the right place or not um but it is really good there as well so all three of those were high on my list have you ever been to any of those i the only one i've been to is the black sheep and it is i'm surprised i didn't write it down on my list because i love it there it's actually the last place we ate out before the uh before the covid shutdown remember um we went there for brunch and it was delicious as always i highly suggest getting whatever you get the side is either salad or fries get both they're both delicious look at you you can get half and half the dressing on the salad is really really good i know a random thing to be excited about but it's delicious i will say salad dressing can be tasty it's a no judgment zone here exactly i definitely am going to write the wild leek down though because i need to try that place it sounds fantastic so so good and locally owned as well which is great all right so continuing on uh let's move on to the hidden gems our first head and gem is the dartmouth waterfront i think we've already talked about the halifax bridges getting you to and from halifax and dartmouth and we've referenced the fairy it's a really great way to get across from halifax to dartmouth the ferry itself it's a great ride beautiful you get to see both sides of the harbor and it is 2.75 for an adult fare once you're over there there's some great restaurants and great shops i'm not honestly been to this at dartmouth waterfront a ton of times but i know that i've gone to a couple restaurants over there and it's super fun jen how about you yeah it's kind of crazy how much i haven't been to germany i know being that it's right there but there is um really good views of halifax from dartmouth you know those classic like shops of halifax are actually taken from dartmouth one of my favorite restaurants over there is the wooden monkey also my favorite cider that's made in halifax is lake city ciders that's made in dartmouth and you can go into their tasting room there is there's a lot of little hidden gems in dartmouth so you should definitely walk around and check it out our next hidden gem is the boardroom game cafe so it's in downtown halifax i believe on barrington street and it is a place where you can go and play board games they also have a delicious menu of like sandwiches and snacks and they also have a cafe make coffee and they also serve alcoholic drinks as well and they have reopened now post coved i know that they posted on their facebook page that every time a game gets played it gets put in quarantine for two days before it comes badly out it does oh wow so that's how they're keeping it safe for everybody as well as having lots of distance between tables it's a really really fun place to spend a couple of hours especially on like a rainy halifax day yeah i've been there once and i really enjoyed it the food was great the coffee was great and one thing i really like too is that they come around and explain the games to you if you need them to so you can go in there and i'm sure there's going to be a ton of games that people might not even have heard of but maybe they want to try and it's great to sort of have someone there ready to help you i really liked that aspect of it another great spot for the adventurous type now i have been to one of these spots it doesn't mean i'm adventurous but we did have a great hike and these are a couple of wilderness areas in halifax now there's a newly formed shaw wilderness park it is 153 acres of urban wilderness apparently it's not super well marked but there's a ton of hidden gems within that area so something you could check out especially if you have a gps on your phone as most of us do that could be super helpful as well and that's what we use for the second wilderness park i wanted to mention which is blue mountain birch cove wilderness area so we've done that from a couple of different directions a couple of different trails in we found some really great shots so there's a lake there's a look off over the lake as well it was super peaceful so again i'm not super adventurous but you could go much deeper than we did and if you just want to take a hike like us you don't have to go in too far to get some really great sights so that was you know really enjoyable and it's right really in our downtown uh in our city limit so that works so well too yeah i actually had never heard of these until you brought them up so they're definitely hidden gems from people even people who live here no then well that's good yeah i know the people yeah my next hidden gem is at the duncan's cove hike which is a bit outside of downtown halifax it's in sambro area but it's still um within hrm and it's just a nice hike around or along the edge of the earth of the province right along the edge of the water it's it parts of it are challenging i would definitely call it like moderately challenging um if you're an experienced hiker you'll have no problem but we took our dog and we had a really good time there's actually a couple of um world war ii bunkers that have been kind of graffitied so they're pretty cool to look at too oh that's awesome something else we did that's a hidden gem kind of outside of the city a lot of locals might know about it but it's really great to sort of spread the word either way is called the bike and bean so it's a cafe you can grab a snack a coffee but you can also go there and rent bikes it was about for four hours i think for two of us it was around 60 plus tax which you know for really great bikes we thought that was a reasonable price right beside the bike and bean are some long trails you can go in either direction and uh see some really great sites in terms of you know either the ocean some uh lakes as well so i think it's uh something interesting to do i didn't have a great experience don't fault the bike and be last time i was there i took a bit of a tumble but that's on me not on them and i didn't injure the bike which honestly was it was the part i was most worried about i do still have a bruise uh about seven months later from the experience but it's just a reminder of you know something to do outside the city yes a free souvenir up here i've also been to the bike and bean it is a fun it's a multi-use trail so we actually walked it but keep in mind there are people biking and walking and i saw people horseback riding on it the last time we were there so you know just keep in mind there are other people around doing different things than you yeah for sure our next secret hidden gem this one really is secret is noble bar so this one is actually thanks to listener ben um we put on our facebook page asking anybody if they had any hidden gems of halifax and so this one is a secret kind of prohibition era bar it's underneath another uh bar the middle spoon also on barrington street i believe in halifax and so you need a password to get in and to get the password you need to be on their email list and they'll email it out to you and then you go into the middle spoon and you go up to a server and you say this secret phrase and you have to say it exactly right or else they'll just pretend that you're a crazy person who doesn't know what they're talking about if you say it exactly right they will take you downstairs through some random hallways into a basement secret prayer yep definitely yeah it's kind of a blank stare i think if you give them the wrong phrase or password so yeah it'd be on the email list or know someone that is i've only been there once and i wasn't on the email list but again my friend was um it is really interesting it's almost like going there specifically for the atmosphere which is it's really great in that regard the drinks are pretty pricey but i think you're sort of paying for the experience so just keep that in mind and we also had a couple of desserts that were tasty but i think overall you're paying for the experience i think it's something fun and something you know it at least you should experience once definitely so our last secret hidden gem is the art gallery of nova scotia which might not be super hidden it is a pretty big building in downtown halifax but the hidden gem with inside the hidden gem is the mod lewis house so mod lewis was a popular folk artist um she's from digby nova scotia she was really popular in the 60s she is actually born with birth defects and rheumatoid arthritis so she was famous for the way that she would hold the paintbrush which resulted in a really unique style of painting and so her home she had painted every square inch of her home and it is beautiful so when she passed away um it fell into disrepair a little bit but the art gallery actually picked it up and brought it to the museum the whole house now lives inside the museum you can look it's so crazy i know it's super cool yeah i have i actually didn't know that and i have i don't even know i think i might have been to the art gallery for an event but not specifically to visit and i certainly did not see mod lewis's house so this is something i'm definitely gonna check out and was a hidden gem that i learned about yeah um we did have listener brittany hey brittany she reached out to us actually in our dms on instagram and they had to cancel a trip here and they're gonna reschedule for next year but she actually kind of wanted to know a bit about the nightlife she's probably asking the wrong people yes she is

but i did some research um and i did know of course i swear i knew that halifax really does have a vibrant maritime pub scene there's lots of local bands cover bands also people doing local music of their own there is party boats that do go out on the harbor in the summer time i have done that i swear in the past and it is fun there's lively breweries there's tons of breweries in nova scotia and there are very lively breweries in halifax there's a dinner theater and also neptune theater which has a really long history in the city and then of course if you're into this sort of thing there's casino nova scotia which is maybe a great place to sort of end your evening or um you know start your evening it's really a good book end so i'm jen anything else that uh that you want to mention in terms of the nightlife yeah i was just thinking that kind of like the classic halifax bar is the lower deck yes you kind of you know if you want real halifax night out that's the place to go no that's a very very good point now there are two so the one i would uh recommend they're both lovely but the one i would recommend for that authentic halifax is the one down on the boardwalk that we've already mentioned so definitely check it out um and again if you're coming in the summer which i recommend there are some outdoor beer markets too including one of jen's favorites it's a spin-off from that it is a stubborn goat beer market down on the waterfront they do serve food and and beer down there too um and again there's 200 plus choices of bars and restaurants you will find something trust me and you don't even have to go far to go from one to the other you know they're they're right there you'll find them trust us you cannot make a corner turn without running into a pub or a restaurant that's so true so halifax being that it's the capital of nova scotia you will fly in if you're flying in from somewhere you're going to land in halifax you're going to want to spend some time here but you might want to use it as gateways to other places in nova scotia our province is beautiful and has tons of different places to visit you're going to want to visit peggy's cove classically in hrm but it is i don't know how far from downtown 25 minutes maybe i'd say 35 30 35 yeah it's um lighthouse it's busy but it's classic halifax as well it's you just have to go i mean it's one of the most photographed life houses in the world so how do you know 100 you must you must what else can we do uh lawrence town beach for some surfing if you're into that or you can lay on the beach and watch the surfers good options yeah yep yep and cape breton cabot trail we're gonna do you know episodes about other places in nova scotia so this is just kind of a general overview the south shore is beautiful down along the right lighthouse route um driving down there gutenberg mahome bay all those good places halifax is a great jumping off point is what we're trying to say yeah definitely so come spend some time here rent a car and get out of the city and explore this beautiful province just like we're all going to be doing this year and again we'll do some other episodes in the future about the rest of nova scotia to keep you informed of what else you could do so we are having uh you know it's a halifax love in today and so we're each going to sort of like you know i wanted to mention like why in particular i love halifax neither of us are originally from here so it's our adopted home essentially um and i'm from a super small town in nova scotia halifax was this sort of big illustrious looming city it was a big deal and so i've been living in the area since about 1990 um nine and for me i love halifax because it is a small city but it's um it's a city though that allows for anonymity so it's it's small but it's big enough that you don't go somewhere and always see someone you know so i really like that especially being from a small town and it has everything really that that we need to enjoy so um it has nature in and around the city so you don't have to go too far there are things right here in the same there's great food options that we've talked about jen and i being travelers and of course pete and i being a traveling couple it's close to the airport which i'm all about and it's only about 30 minutes or so from where we live lots of parks cafes and really enough smaller surrounding communities which is also where jen and i live we don't live in the downtown core so there's so many great living options that you don't have to live downtown but you can live just outside and so much is within such a short distance so i think overall sort of the size and all of the things that are to do you know keeps us busy and and makes me happy to live here what about you yeah so like megan said i also grew up in a small town that was a little bit bigger than the one megan grew up in but not that much in the current scheme of things i moved here to go to college uh so i've been living here for 12 years now and i actually didn't love halifax right away i thought it was too small for a city i just thought there's bigger and better out there and i just didn't appreciate it and i actually didn't appreciate it until i started vlogging and reeling about halifax it took me a long time to i know i know it's okay you're here now i got there but it took me a long time to really love work and to love living here and i do i mean i love our neighborhood um we like megan said i actually live a bit further out from downtown than she does much closer to the airport it's only like 15 20 minutes from the airport yes but i live in a bit more of like suburbia but i love being close to the water me too we both we both grew up in beach side town so and halifax still has the water connection without being a tiny town with nothing in it there's a lot of green space i live close to some trails here out here in lower sackville so i really like living there and people are are really friendly and it sounds like super cliche people are like oh nova scotia people are so friendly and like but we are people are nice mostly to each other and courteous and they smile at you on the street you know it's not like a hardened city where no one wants to look anybody else in the eye so 100 i mean look at how super cute and friendly we are so imagine what everyone else is like exactly and also i have to mention along with the friendly piece you know if you come to nova scotia be prepared to hold the door because it is a tradition here that you just hold the door sometimes you get stuck holding it for 10 people but we're door holders we are that happened to me today and it was my first time like going to a store during these times where someone hold the held the door open for me and like it still happened it still happened we're still holding those we can't stop we'll never stop um to finish things off today guys we are going to let you in on some trivia and fun facts we've alluded to or potentially mentioned a few of these but we're gonna go through them because that's what we do here so this one was news to me so i was super excited to read this so jen included that harry houdini and his wife bess lived here for a month in 1896 as a young aspiring illusionist harry not this together so they were kind of a team were they she was like his lady on the stage oh yeah another fun fact for you another fun fact about we love fun facts here at the travel mug podcast so just they're going to keep coming and definitely and definitely share any two that you have but first ever jailbreak was performed at halifax city hall on june 25th oh my goodness we just missed this 1896 that is so cool i know i actually i i googled halifax nova scotia fun facts and this is one of them yeah and i had no idea but it i why is this not mentioned in halifax i don't know museums why don't we have a harry houdini museum it's so fun i know it is maybe it's mentioned at the museum i haven't been to yet oh yeah maybe we should find one we haven't been everywhere so we haven't done everything yet yeah um what is next halifax experienced the world's biggest man-made explosion before the atomic bomb so the halifax explosion destroyed a lot of downtown halifax on december 6 1917. yeah it's a bit of a sad fun fact it's not a fun fact it's just a fact not so much on the fun but it is still interesting in our city's history especially because of the buildings that you can see that survived the the explosion i know a couple of our churches um did and it it is it's a sad part of our history but something to know for sure well there is a fun fact though that came out of it and that is that um boston massachusetts actually sent us a lot of help during that time which was obviously greatly needed um our city was was you know partially flattened and every year since uh we send boston uh a giant carefully curated christmas tree which they actually erect in their city that still goes on today we're still showing our thanks like good old canadians it's a big thing still here to watch the tree be trucked away on a giant flatbed so yeah yeah definitely we turned it around it's fun now look at us making it fun we can we can turn it all around halifax leases the land for point pleasant park which we referred to earlier from the british for one shilling a year now i think that's incredibly interesting and i learned this because we will put the link in our show notes but peter actually went to point pleasant park and did a video on the park um earlier in the year which is on our youtube channel and he mentions that in it and i honestly had no idea no and it was a 999 year lease so i have no idea where we are in that lease i'm i don't know hopefully we're just halfway through i don't know i don't know now what's up with food what's what's what's what's going on with that so i feel like we're not the most qualified people to talk about this because neither of us eat them but the effect i have though okay well i haven't because no but the official food of health facts is the donaire yes yes and now i did work at a pizza place in terms of my work history which i enjoyed very much actually i've eaten many donaires it was it was an acquired taste it's much like a gyro if you've had one of those before it's it's um a spiced hamburger sort of on a spit it twirls they cut it off they put it in a pita with some onions and tomato and donaire sauce sometimes you can add cheese that's what i would do it is delicious it's an acquired taste though but if you want the official food of halifax eat a donair it's pretty that it's it's that simple yeah that's true if you want the unofficial food of halifax that's kind of like the sister to the donaire you can have garlic fingers and those are vegetarian and you still get the donair sauce so it's true i and i still eat those today oh one other thing before we move on to the last of our fun facts is we talked a lot about food we did not mention seafood um it's probably because neither of us eat it no it's true and so the one of the official food i'm going to say of the whole province is is definitely seafood if you want any type of seafood you can you know be rest assured that it's going to be fresh here if you love fish lobster whatever the case might be halifax in nova scotia in general is your spot for seafood so just keep that in mind too yeah definitely if that's your thing it's all over the place it is you'll find it yeah yeah okay so back to the titanic fun facts there's cemetery in halifax that has a lot of graves from the titanic so a lot of people were brought here and the dead are almost dead and so a lot of them are buried here in halifax and one of the graves is listed as j dawson and it doesn't seem like it is the beloved jack dawson from the movie because it doesn't seem like he was a real person but uh a lot of people like to go there and take a picture of that still yeah so again a fact not necessarily fun i don't know where this list is going but it actually it does tie in with pop culture and i would just like to mention for the record that jack could have fit on that door with her 100 oh i died yes yeah so that's all we have for today thank you so much for listening we hope that we inspired you to visit halifax or if you live here we hope that we inspired you to look at it in a different light definitely as always you can find us on instagram and facebook we've been enjoying all the interaction we've been having um we'll do a little bit more of that each week definitely disclaimer for this episode it was really impossible to cover every great spot or everyone's favorite for halifax so make sure that you do reach out to us on social media to share your halifax favorites with us some pictures of the city whatever the case might be we'd love to hear from you um our travel blogs and more information about halifax that we've written about or videos that we've done on halifax are listed in the show notes and we're going to talk to you again soon thank you so much for joining us yeah have a great one see ya