Thursday, July 19, 2007

July 16 - North Sydney


We spent the day on the Cabot Trail. It's not really a trail but a road that travels around the northern most part of Cape Breton Island. Up here roads are often called trails and lakes are often called ponds.

Our first stop was The Clucking Chicken restaurant for breakfast. We'd received a tip that they had a great bakery. They did! We bought enough extra stuff that we were surviving on scrumptious pastries for a couple of days. We had Scottish Scones, Chocolate Apple Strudel, Apple turnovers and Poridge Bread, not to mention breakfast.

We drove through a few quaint fishing villages and way up north to Meat Point overlooking St. Lawrence Bay. We'd hoped to see whales but weren't so lucky. The sea from the cliffs was so lovely though, that we weren't disappointed. The villages up there are so remote and you can tell the people really depend on one another. One had a little community center where they could gather, play games, eat, sing, and dance to while away the long winters. On the wall was a hooked rug with a sign calling it Oprah's Rug. Apparently Oprah Winfrey had been given it as a gift in Africa, and having received more than she could keep, had passed it on to someone who passed it on to here. They were so proud to have and display it.

We drove up over the Cape Breton Highlands where we stopped to walk around a bog that had been supplied with a nice board walk. We saw the most wonderful wildflowers, close up, including a couple of different orchids and some pitcher plants.

Our next stop was Cheticamp in the heart of Acadia (L'Acadie). You may remember that the Acadians were French and were driven from here, some of whom moved to Louisiana and became those we call the Cajuns. Many have now returned from exile. We enjoyed the food, more like home cooking than any restraunt yet. The waitresses wore traditional dresses and were so funny and charming, mostly middleaged housewives.

We finished the day driving over Kelly's Mountain and on the North Sydney for the night.

2 comments:

ReveryWings said...

That cottage on the inlet is starting to look like stuff I hope you see in Newfoundland.

Love the picture of the picture plant. I just took a picture of it. Verona got a picture of me taking it. Can you picture that? lnmqao!

Booklogged said...

Reverywings, that is a picture of a frilly orchid. Inmqao!