Dave and I spent the day wandering Halifax, mostly along the waterfront where we grabbed a couple of cookies from Peace by Chocolate, wandered through the Taste Asia festival, looked at the public art (I was very taken with the wire sculpture of a boat, and confused by being unable to find the Wave initially which I thought was closer to the ferry terminal), had mussels at Salty’s, and checked out waterfront murals.
I wrote this on Facebook midway through the day: I’m having all kinds of feelings walking around downtown Halifax today. I’m so happy to be home! The air smells right. I’m eating mussels for lunch. There’s an Asian festival going on. It’s great. Also there’s all kinds of new buildings I haven’t really paid attention to on previous visits so my morning walk to work I used to make in the late 90s and early oughts is completely different. I completely lost track of where the Wave was. I’m really happy Halifax is growing and vibrant but am I though? Because I also feel a little like how dare you. It’s fine, but it felt really surreal for awhile there walking through these places I used to know so well that are so altered.
We also mosied up to Spring Garden to go to the Public Gardens and visit my friend Louise’s memorial bench. I saw these ducks:
And these flowers, including the amusing/creepy head in the planter:
On the way back to the ferry terminal, we had some pretty amazing jerk chicken and walked through a pedestrian area near Blowers St (and how sad am I that the Blowers St Paperchase is gone, because of course it is, but I didn’t realize or didn’t remember) with even more murals. Here’s a tease, but I’ve decided to do a separate post for all of those photos. I love, just love, that we have so much public art and so many little surprises throughout the city.
Title from Joel Plaskett’s “Love This Town.”