Day 1: a tiring day of travel
Trip Start
Jul 28, 2011
1
10
Trip End
Aug 07, 2011
What I did
Travel day - Minneapolis to Halifax to Truro
Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Our daughter dropped us off for our 1:50 p.m. flight early so she could get to work, giving us plenty of time for a sit down lunch and shopping at MSP. Although we really like Ikes, Chilis drew us in with their pictures of food. We were so hungry! David and I both ordered salads and were happy with our choices. Then on to some shopping - not a huge number of stores, but there are a few shops I like. Picked up a birthday gift for myself at The Body Shop.
The flight from Minneapolis to Detroit was uneventful - the plane left a little early and arrived early. The Detroit airport has become a bigger hub for Delta than is the Twin Cities, and it really is clean & glitzy in a modern way. The pilot annouced that the Detroit Airport had won a JD Power quality award. This would have been unheard of in the old airport.
Our flight to Halifax was on a small pencil shapped jet, and David and I couldn't sit together. Lucky for David, he was in an exit row so had plenty of leg room. Arrived in Halifax on time, just at dusk, to partly cloudy skies and warm temperatures. Very comfortable outside!
We got through customs easily - our customs agent seemed genuinely interested in the touristy things we had planned, even telling us a little about some of the history of the areas we are planning to visit. The Halifax airport is small, clean, with plenty of signage. Picked up our rental car and drove the 40 - 50 miles to Truro. Our rental car is a Dodge Charger (it was that or a Kia), and am surprised that we really like the Dodge. Our GPS works fine. Yea!
Our first night is at the Truro Holiday Inn. Truro seemed to be an acceptable distance from the airport on the way to Cape Breton Island, our destination for tomorrow. The Holiday Inn is quite nice - much nicer than we expected. But we are hungry - the only food we've eaten since lunch at Chilis was the peanuts Delta offers. No luck on food - there is a restaurant here but it closed at 11:00 p.m. - just as we arrived. We are too tired to go out for food. At least the bar was open! So we each had a Bloody Caesar and pretzels from the vending machine. Our bartender was also chatty and friendly. Had a nice discussion about chip & pin cards and banking in Canada vs the U.S.
