12.10.18 About the Bay of Fundy

The alarm clock mercilessly goes off at 5:45 a.m. Miraculously, it's temporarily dry outside. The inclusive breakfast is surprisingly good. The breakfast room only has 4 small tables, but bagels, muffins, English muffins, fruit, yogurt, coffee/tea, jam, and cream cheese are available. An hour after waking up, we roll out of the parking lot and actually manage to get lost in the first 5 minutes. It's pitch dark and starting to rain again. At 7:00 a.m., we're in line for boarding, exchanging our reservation for boarding passes, and rolling onto the car deck of the not fully booked ferry to Digby (Nova Scotia) 30 minutes later. The MS Fundy Rose is a fairly modern ship with a lot of seating, two cafeterias, free Wi-Fi, and a sun deck, which today should be called a rain deck. As we depart and during the 2:15-hour crossing to Nova Scotia, it rains non-stop.

At 10:15 a.m., we're back in Nova Scotia, and since we can't check into the hotel this early, we drive to Tim Hortons in the continuing rain and treat ourselves to a coffee.

Due to the lack of real alternatives until we can check into our hotel, we decide to take a small tour in this miserable weather towards Digby Neck, a roughly 60-kilometer long peninsula or land mass below Digby that is eventually only accessible by ferry and continues as 'Long Island'. We faintly see trees with a visibility of only 100 meters in the mist. It's supposed to be beautiful in the sun, with deciduous forests (presumably colorful) and lakes (presumably blue), but everything is pretty invisible to us in the constant rain. We turn around and drive through Digby to Annapolis Royal, which is about 40 km past Digby. Here, we dash into Bistro East between two rain showers and I order scallops. Digby is famous for its scallops, and I already know that I want to have more this evening. While we're still eating, it starts pouring outside again. When the rain subsides a bit, we browse through the three open stores next to the bistro, but don't find anything, and drive back to Digby in the rain.

At first, the hotel can't find our reservation, but then they do have the right room available. We roll down 350 meters along Main Street until we reach the house where the apartments are. The room is a bit like an apartment, including a dining table, microwave, refrigerator, and balcony. In the refrigerator, there's a small basket with various things for breakfast tomorrow. The balcony overlooks the fishing harbor, which seems to be very busy. Stacked lobster traps can be seen with dozens of markers hanging from them. Since it's dry, we stroll along this main street to the lighthouse and back, check the menus of the 3-4 restaurants that are still open, and reserve a window table in one of them (which will also be closed until April). At 6:30 p.m., we're sitting at dinner, two houses down from our accommodation. As planned, I have scallops again for dinner.

In Digby, the lobster season starts at midnight on October 14 and ends on January 1, 2019. We had already heard in Neils Harbour on Cape Breton that lobster fishing times are regionally determined, and that's why only lobster meat, but not whole lobsters, were on the menu there. Now, dozens of fishermen are gathering here and waiting for the starting signal for this fishing area, which extends well into the Bay of Fundy.

This was a miserable weather day, but it's supposed to be dry tomorrow, although cloudy. We will visit the fishing harbor tomorrow before starting our journey around the southern part of Nova Scotia to Lunenburg. If the weather turns even worse, we will drive across Nova Scotia to Lunenburg.