My niece is getting married there summer 2023. Looking for advice concerning airline to fly, sights, food, etc. never been, don't know what to expect. We will be arriving a week before the wedding to sightsee and enjoy Halifax, TIA.

valvemonkey91 said:

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My niece is getting married there summer 2023. Looking for advice concerning airline to fly, sights, food, etc. never been, don't know what to expect. We will be arriving a week before the wedding to sightsee and enjoy Halifax, TIA.

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I love Halifax and I'm not really sure why. Here's what I remember...

You should be good with any of the major carriers. Halifax is the largest commericial airport in the Atlantic provinces and also has pre-clearance for customs purposes which makes things a lot easier. If you have a preferred carrier, it's just a matter of picking which hub you want to make your final flight on. As far as I know Air Canada is still in star alliance with United, so if you have status on United it'll carry over on your Air Canada leg.

Food/sights...i did not have a car when I was there so cabs/uber/on foot is how I rolled. Airport is a fairly good distance from the main city, I want to say it's 20-30 minutes. I stayed about a block from the ScotiaBank centre (forced typo, ha) which is a 15k seat or so arena for concerts and hockey etc. I was near the Halifax Citadel which is a big national park that used to be an active military installation. Its a giant fort on a hill. To me that sells itself but it may not be what you're after.

Halifax has several craft brewery type things..Alexander Keith's is near/on the waterfront, which is a neat little area with a bunch of touristy shops, etc. and a cool farmers market type place.
Purists probably won't call them craft (they're part of anheuser Busch now) but if the craft brewery purist in you wants something else, Propeller Brewing is close to the Citadel (opposite side of downtown from Alexander Keith's) and easy to get to.

Other stuff downtown...Casino Nova Scotia is on the northern end of the waterfront. There's a mall close by between the Citadel and the waterfront and lots of little pubs and restaurants. Ones that stuck out to me...Bluenose II, Salty's (great views of the harbor) and Cows (a sweets shop, lots of ice cream flavors)

All of this area is very walkable, but the elevation changes leading from west to east towards the waterfront is pretty drastic on foot. If you have bad knees or tire easy, plan to take your time. Walking north and south is easy. East and west maybe not so much.

Outside downtown...I know of some random places. Mother's Pizza is wood fired and I'm not much of a connoisseur but I thought they had great pizzas. Also in that same general area was Burrito Jax (you guessed it, burritos a la Freebirds/Chipotle/Qdoba/Moes) and Lion's Head Pub. Good pub food, it sounds strange but they had thus weird curry mayo/ketchup dipping sauce that totally made me fixated on sweet potato fries for a while. A couple blocks from Mother's is the Hyrdrostone park area which has a lot of good historical info re: the Halifax explosion. That area was virtually wiped out in 1917 so it was rebuilt into kind of a city-center type neighborhood you'd expect in New England or Europe, with a lot of shops and green space.

If you just want some basic grocery type stuff, Sobeys and Atlantic Superstore are the big chains. Canadian Tire is basically like a home depot + Walmart +tractor supply co but not much on the grocery side. Can't really explain it but it could be useful.

Tim Hortons is the starbucks/Dunkin of Canada. They're basically everywhere and shockingly enough decent food options for lunch.

There's one street leading to the North End (where the Hyrdrostone area is) from downtown and it reminded me of say, south congress in Austin. Oddball little shops and I remember a crazy cool record store that I wanted to spend a lot of money in. I forget the name of the street...its not Agricola but a couple blocks east.

You'll probably see a lot of random donair places, poutine places and the like...im not a donair fan but if youre interested in poutine, theres a chain called Smokes where they have a ton of different styles.
There was a Greek place a few blocks from where i waa working that had the best pan seared fish I've ever had but I can't remember where it was or what the name was. It looked like the bottom floor of someone's house, and it was a couple of blocks away from a Shoppers Drug Mart. My point is...Halifax was nothing like I'd ever experienced so I just dove in and went walking around and if something looked good, I went for it. It changed the way I look at seafood...I tried more than the usual deep fry everything till its golden brown and I loved it. Not bad for a south texas kid who grew up on catfish. Canadian milk does taste weird, though. I think they pasteurize it differently. It tastes...more robust.

Anything you're looking for in particular? I do remember hanging out in the hotel bar once and someone came in advertising their brand new BBQ place and I about laughed my ass off at the idea of BBQ in Atlantic Canada but the menu looked promising so, hey, why not? And it was pretty good. It was called Boneheads or Bodacious or something with a B.

This is all off the top of my head. So if I think of anything else I'll let you know.

Wow! Thanks for all this info. I'm really not sure what the itinerary is going to be with the wedding party once we arrive. This gives me a great list of things when I get a break from the group. My knees thank you for the heads up.

That's probably the best single city review we've ever seen on this board.

Nice job.

If you want a day trip, hopewell rock is about 3.5 hours. It is the highest tides in the world (so they say). It's just in New Brunswick and it is pretty amazing to walk on the seabed/beach, and see the waterline marks 50 feet above you. The day we were there was lower tides, so only 38 feet of tide. Beautiful country in that area

Ha, thanks I think? I had zero expectations and about 4 days notice when I was told I was going to Halifax, and I already at another job site (boss called one day and asked if I had my passport handy, I was able to convince them I needed to go home for a night to switch out suitcases and repack) so I did literally no research before I went and just kind of winged it.

The rest of this is some Halifax and some generic Canada stuff so bear with me...after re-reading the OP and seeing you've got a year to prepare, I'm glad you'll have that extra time. Since you'll be there a week you'll probably want as many food options as possible (which is why I mentioned grocery stores) so I thought of some more so you can balance out "destination" type meals with "let's just grab something quick" meals. The following places are chains or maybe just multiple locations but I thought they were good either in Halifax or elsewhere...and by good, I mean "good enough". I wouldn't write home about them but I wasn't mad I spent money there, if that makes sense. Not gonna bother listing the American chains like Wendy's or McDonald's.

Swiss Chalet: casual restaurant, their big thing is roast chicken. It was ok. If you're into a basic Sunday dinner type place, this is that.

Harvey's: Typical fast food burger joint.

A&W: ok so it's kind of like the American version of A&W fast food with the cheese curds and the burgers are way better than the A&W burgers in America.

The Keg: high end (I think?) Steakhouse chain...akin to a Ruth's Chris or Mortons.

Boston Pizza: casual restaurant, pizza and pasta options

East Side Mario's: casual restaurant, kind of like Boston Pizza but maybe a little more upscale? A Maggianos Little Italy vs Olive Garden, I guess.

Old Triangle Ale House: Irish style pub...never went to the one in Halifax but I was a huge fan of the one in Moncton. If I recall correctly there's a handful of these scattered across the Atlantic/maritime provinces. Lots of good memories here, one of my fave co-workers was doing the gig with me in Moncton and we were in here several times a week.

Pizza Pizza: Canadian Little Caesars, basically, but better. I recommend the "Canadian" pizza which is usually pepperoni, mushrooms and bacon. And by bacon i do mean what we call "Canadian bacon" or depending on the area, you may get peameal bacon instead. Peameal bacon is basically Canadian bacon but rolled in cornmeal (formerly pea meal) and its generally not smoked but it is cured. Sometimes it's even chopped or crumbled. If you want bacon as in strips of fatty deliciousness, just ask for breakfast bacon. As far as I can tell, Canadian bacon, back bacon and peameal bacon are all basically the same. I'm using the tried and true "post a wrong answer and wait for someone to correct you" method of internet protocol/decorum to save me here.

Canadian currency is plastic for the most part and is very colorful...each denomination is a different color and slightly different sized. Pretty sure the $5 bill has a hockey scene on it which cracked me up. I wouldn't bother finding a bank or trading US$ for Canadian money. Make sure you have a credit or debit card that does not charge a foreign transaction fee and you're good to go. You can also use that in am ATM to get some pocket money for tips, etc. It does kind of make you feel like a baller to flip someone a looney ($1 coin) or a twoney ($2 coin) as a tip. I'm just saying. Canada was WAY ahead of us on the chip card thing, so you'd probably be just fine and very secure if you went mostly cashless.

Overall I've found Canadians to be incredibly polite and friendly. They're often very aware of American politics and culture, and they have unique views on it. For example, I remember trying to explain American health care to the project manager at one of the sites I was at, and she is a VERY conservative person and she just could not wrap her head around the fact that we don't really have any form of universal health care here. That was an interesting conversation. All I could do was shrug.

I'll keep coming back to this thread if things pop into my head.

superunknown said:

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Ha, thanks I think? I had zero expectations and about 4 days notice when I was told I was going to Halifax, and I already at another job site (boss called one day and asked if I had my passport handy, I was able to convince them I needed to go home for a night to switch out suitcases and repack) so I did literally no research before I went and just kind of winged it.

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Thanks for the extra explanation - because it was obvious that Halifax wasn't like a bucket list destination for you or anything. It appeared to be someplace that you had to go to without much planning or guidance and made it up as you went along (which is awesome and usually how I travel too).

Since the pandemic though, the only short notice, no guidance destinations I've travelled to are Grand Rapids, MI and Quincy, WA. Nothing nearly as exciting as Nova Scotia.

Yeah, it was a "we need you in Halifax on Monday. Book a room at the (whatever hotel) and meet up with ______, she's taking over the project for _____ and we're adding you to this one. We're sending _____ to your current project so get with them to update anything they need."

I must say per diem rates in Canada beat the heck out of anywhere in the U.S.

Buddy of mine was in the Maritimes last week doing some trucking shipping whatnot and a different buddy was talking about relocating up and down the east coast and mentioned Canada so naturally I pitched him on Halifax and it all made me think of this thread.

So is the wedding still on?