Day Thirteen -- Thursday -- June 17, 2010 -- Halifax, NS

6:00 am -- Phil, Dave and I arrive at the Java Factory across the street from Pier 21 -- to use the free WiFi.  I get a very good cup of coffee and a great morning glory muffin.  We definitely beat the “rush” -- we’re the only ones here.  Patte comes by about 6:30 -- and we still have the place to ourselves. 

9:00 am -- We meet Bubbles as arranged for our tour to Peggy’s Cove and the cemetery where some of the Titanic Disaster casualties are buried.

Peggy’s Cove is so very picturesque --- there are two versions of how this place came to be called Peggy’s Cove.  The first is that a schooner was wrecked off  Lighthouse Point in a “Southeaster”.  Everyone on board was drowned except for a woman named Margaret (Peggy).  People would come to visit “Peggy of the Cove” and pretty soon the name of the village became Peggy’s Cove.  The second and more logical reason is that this cove is situated at the entrance to St. Margaret’s Bay -- and thus became known as Peggy’s Cove. Regardless of the legend -- it is a beautiful place.  You feel like you’re standing in the middle of a postcard that’s been retouched.  However I wouldn’t want to be here in the winter as I bet it is windy and bitterly cold.

On our way back to Halifax the next stop is Fairview Lawn Cemetery where a number of the casualties of the Titanic are buried.  The White Star Line paid for the burials and the stones as well as commissioning the design of the “Titanic Plot” in the shape of the bow of a ship to fit the side of the hill.  In some cases family members enlarged the stones and/or embellished the engravings. The coroner in Halifax was charged with identifying the bodies so even though several have names -- others have only numbers which coincide with when the body was retrieved from the ocean. One of the graves is for a J. Dawson who was a crewmen.  When the blockbuster movie came out -- Leonardo DiCaprio’s fictional character’s name was Jack Dawson.  According to Bubbles -- people came flocking to this gravesite leaving flowers and other memorabilia thinking that this was Jack Dawson’s grave. It is a peaceful place and very moving to see all these graves lined up row by row.

After a brief tour of the parts of Halifax we had not seen, Bubbles takes us back to Pier 21 -- and Patte and I go over to the Pier 22 shopping area to see if we can spend our Canadian money.  We spend a little but there really is nothing that catches our eye.

1:15 pm We’re back on board the Maasdam and are having lunch in the Lido.

2:30 pm -- Trivia in the Crow’s Nest with Linda -- we do ok but it appears that our winning day will not come again.

7:30 pm -- Dinner in the Pinnacle Grill -- Can you believe the hostess attempts to seat us right next to the window with the missing shade and the sun is still out.  We nip this in the bud and immediately ask for a different table and are accommodated. 

After dinner we stop in at the Piano Bar -- Phil continuously popping in and out reporting to Dave the score of the Celtics game.   In bed by 11:15 -- I’ve come down with a cold and it is getting me down. Our clocks are turned back to Eastern Daylight Time so we get another hour of sleep tonight.