Digby Seafood Festival

I had been wanting to see the western tip of Nova Scotia for 5 years, and what better excuse to go than the Digby Seafood Festival. For me, though, it was just a way to manipulate JR into going to the town that I REALLY wanted to see - ANNAPOLIS ROYAL - which is only a 10 minutes away!  When I was 10 years old, we almost moved there. I can hardly remember anything from those days (I have a bad childhood memory). I know that there was another hippie family living in Annapolis Valley that we were staying with. I remember playing outside and there were these enormous stately trees in the front, and a large white, country farm house at the back and it was just glorious. I remember blue berry picking and my mother and her best friend cooking in the huge kitchen, our fathers nowhere to be found. I also remember going to a small town (Annapolis Royal) and looking at a green and white house that I thought my parents were going to purchase. In my 10 year old fantasy, it stood on stilts on the edge of the water (not true) with its large windows facing the road. When they didn't buy the house, and we ended up living in New Brunswick as a result, it became one of the earliest and most enduring disappointments of my life. 

So, here we are, some 33 years later in Annapolis Royal. To call it cute is just a simple understatement. I was so busy oohing and aahing that I didn't even get any really good photos. To add to the sheer storybook quality of the town, we arrived at 11AM on Saturday - which was market day - and we didn't even plan it !! Yes, it is small, but oh my lord, it looks like a movie set.

Digby was nice too. It was a lot more blue collar working town with a real harbor and wharf. The seafood festival parade was a bit hokey, but hey, we were in small town Nova Scotia and I was just happy to see it!

Ultimately, we found the northern side of NS to be more more picturesque that the southern side. The south seemed a little barren, less green, less treed and all around more weather beaten ... is didn't have the curving winding roads and pretty little towns covered with large trees. It does, however, have a ton of interesting Acadian History, which will be another trip!