Oh Canada

It's definitely time to update this thing again...

New York was less amazing than I think it could have been. It was probably a combination of weather, homesickness and lack of interest in most of the big tourist spots.

I'm in Dartmouth, NS, now, though. I flew up on Monday night and crashed in the hotel at Halifax airport for a few hours. I landed at about midnight and figured it would be more sensible to navigate in daylight.

There's a lot of snow. Apparently I timed my arrival for right in the gap between two snow storms, which is pretty good going. I was definitely glad to only have a rucksack rather than a wheely suitcase because I'd have never made it through the snow to Mel and Rob's apartment otherwise. But I got here eventually and befriended the cats pretty quickly.

Tuesday night they were predicting the second snow storm so we went out for food at a bar across the water in Halifax proper and celebrated St Paddys with German music (played by Nova Scotians in lederhosen with inconsistent fake German accents). It was only really fine flakes of snow but it was coming down all night and well into Wednesday so we got about 30-50cm in all, on top of the couple of feet already on the ground.

One of the fairly new traditions of the region is #stormchips. Essentially whenever there's a snow storm everybody empties the crisps aisles of all the food stores and stay inside indulging. Apparently this has been pretty frequent this year because winter just isn't going away.

It was a proper mission going to get storm chips, mind. The snow was waist deep getting onto the street from the apartment and I have neither snow pants nor waterproof boots (I totally thought my boots were waterproof, but apparently not).

My legs have just about forgiven me: it's hard work wading through snow that deep. My feet have yet to sustain any permanent damage from hiking through Halifax with cold, wet socks.

By Thursday most of the roads had been ploughed and the ferry was back up and running. We stopped off at Timmy's for lunch and Mel and I hopped across the water. We had planned to go to a knitting store called The Loop together before Mel had to be at work, but the ferry was only every half hour so there wasn't time. It's a gorgeous little store though. Nowhere close back home sells that much proper wool - it's mostly acrylic. I ended up spending $35 on a skein of the most beautiful hand dyed teal wool (80% merino, 10% cashmere, 10% nylon) with the intention of making a cowl when I finish my current project.

After that I headed what felt like miles further into (and possibly out of) Halifax to the Clay Cafe, a place I'd discovered online and wanted to try out. Most of the way there I was walking in the road because the footpath was 4-5ft deep in snow or climbing narrow channels sunk in the snow where the footpath actually was. I haven't fallen over yet, but there's definitely still time. The regular act of having to walk through inches-deep slushy puddles is unavoidable and my feet suffered for the frequent soaking.

I think I ended up spending about three hours painting and it was gone 5 by the time I left the building. They put a rush note on my stuff because otherwise they wouldn't be ready until Tuesday, which is a day after I've moved on. They should hopefully be ready either today or tomorrow, and Rob spent most of yesterday shovelling snow so we can actually use the car to drive up there (the snow was so deep after the storms that only the top of one of the wing mirrors was visible).

I don't actually have any plans today, particularly. When I've showered and stuff I might actually venture out with my camera (which I've completely failed to do thus far). Hopefully my boots have dried out now.

I think there are plans for Korean barbeque at some point before I go, and now that the car is free we might do that tonight. Apparently it's a while away and the buses aren't running because of the snow (although because of that the ferry is now free until Sunday).

I finally sorted the next leg of my trip last night. I've booked an early afternoon flight to Montreal for Monday and sorted a bed in a hostel until Saturday. I might look at heading up to Quebec City for a few days after that, but I'm not sure where my next stop would be. I've had an offer to crash with another girl from Bishop's in Toronto if I head that way and I'll be stopping in Ottawa at some point.

I'll work something out, I'm sure. Theoretically I have leave to stay in Canada until July 15th although I doubt I'll be here until that late in the year.

(I definitely need to proof read everything before I post it. This tablet keeps changing words without my noticing. Think I caught them all...)