Sonya's Blog - Day 85 - Traveling to Sydney and more Cabot Trail

Sonya’s Blog - Day 85 - September 15th - Traveling to Sydney and more Cabot Trail

We are leaving Ingonish today and traveling to Sydney. The kids did some school work while we packed up and got ready to leave. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining, so that was nice.

We were all packed up and ready to go by 10:30 and our first stop was Ingonish Beach since it was such a nice day. The beach is beautiful and we had fun running around and letting the waves wash over our feet. The water is still pretty warm, which was a pleasant surprise. I walked all the way from one end of the beach to the other and Blake and the kids played tag. We then headed into the center of Ingonish, which is where the visitor’s center is. Isaac wanted to stop there to turn in his Explorer’s book and get his prize. He needs to complete a certain number of activities in order to be an National Parks explorer for that park. You can do the books in English or French and Isaac did this one in French, which was good to keep up his French skills. With that accomplished we continued on our way.

We traveled a little farther and saw a cute little cafe called The Dancing Moose and thought we should stop there for lunch since it was now 12:30. We headed in and took a table. They had Pannekoek (Dutch pancakes, which are a lot like crépes) with many different fillings and toppings. They also had lobster chowder, which sounded tasty. I chose the chowder and then a pannekoek with fruit filling and whip cream. It was all super yummy. They also had a wall of drawings from visitors to the cafe throughout the year, so we had fun looking at all of those. Natasha and Isaac did up their own drawings and we put them up on the wall. They collect them all at the end of the year and put them in a binder.

Once we were back in the car we decided we needed to drive for a bit without stopping because we had to be in Sydney for 3:30 to meet up with Blake’s cousin. She is a teacher out there and we had made plans to meet with her, tour the school she teaches at and then go for supper. We were still over an hour away from Sydney and it was 1:30. We drove and things were pretty uneventful. I did some vocabulary words with Isaac for his English school work.

Not too far up the road we came upon Colaisde na Gàidhlig / The Gaelic College, which is on the Cabot Trail. We wanted to stop in and check it out. It is a neat little College and is not a traditional college, more of a cultural college. You can take courses year round in ten disciplines: Cape Breton fiddle, piano, guitar, step-dancing, and piping, highland dancing, weaving, and of course Gaelic language. Sessions run for a week during the summer (like a summer camp) and they also have Gaelic weekends and after school programs during the rest of the year. They had lots of neat things in there, but Blake and Natasha got all excited about the fiddle. It came with a CD, case and all the things we would need to know to take care of the fiddle properly. It was a good price and Blake and Natasha decided they were going to get it and learn how to play it on the road. They lady at the desk said that they have some fiddlers on staff and did we want to hear what it sounds like before we bought it. We said sure, that would be good since we know nothing about fiddles. She made a phone call and Rodney MacDonald came down, he is the CEO of the college. He was also the Premier of Nova Scotia from 2006 to 2009 and he also did a stint in Federal Politics. Prior to entering politics he was an award winning musician and he came down and played some tunes on the fiddle we were thinking about buying. We were thoroughly impressed and bought the fiddle.

We took a little longer at the College than we had intended, but it was worth it, It did put us a little behind for getting to Sydney for 3:30 as it was 3 when we came out and we were about an hour away still. We called Lianne on her cell phone and left a message and then drove on to Sydney.

We arrived at the Acadian School at about 10 to 4. Lianne didn’t even get our message, but it was fine that we were late as she had some school issues to deal with. We had a tour of the school, which teaches from pre-school up until Grade 12. We then walked to the nearby park which used to be the Sydney Tar Ponds. This was the most extensive remediation project in Canada and the project started in January 2007 and finished in 2013. It is a beautiful park, it is hard to believe it was the same place that the tar ponds were.

We headed for supper at about 5 PM to a restaurant that was in a converted house called The Olive Tree. It was a quaint little restaurant and they had lots of good choices in the menu. Natasha showed Lianne some of our pictures and talked about our trip so far. We all had good meals and had a good visit with Lianne. Lianne told us that she would take us to see the world’s largest fiddle after supper as it was a must do thing if you are in Sydney. We headed down to the Cruise Ship Pavilion after supper and saw the fiddle, it is very large indeed. It has speakers in it and there is a recording of fiddle music being played. We got some good pictures and then walked up and down the dock. The wind came up and it was getting chilly so we headed back to the truck. We thanked Lianne and said our good-byes and then backtracked to North Sydney to find our cottage.

It took us about 1/2 hour to get back to North Sydney and find our Cottage. It was actually a Bed and Breakfast establishment and they had a small house a few doors down that was the cottage. It was a refurbished house from the 1860’s, it was a two-story, two bedroom house. They had done a really nice job of renovating it and it was super quaint. They had done the house up in a 1930’s circa decor, even down to the chandeliers and front door, as well as the framing around the doors. We got all checked in and set up and then settled in for the night.

Natasha face-timed with her friend Felicity, Isaac had a shower and headed to bed and Blake and I decided to watch a movie. We chose Identity Thief because we felt like watching something funny. It was pretty cute and we had some laughs.

We take the ferry to Newfoundland tomorrow, little nervous about it as I don’t love boats.

Sonya