August Expenses - Another expensive month

We spent the first 15 days of the month of August on a cruise ship going from Southampton, England to Greenland with stops in Ireland and Iceland.

While the cruise ship trip was inexpensive by cruise ship standards, it still added quite a lot to the monthly expenses.

We thought they lost Cameron's bag!

Lindsey drove us to Halifax Airport yesterday morning and we got there with lots of time to spare for our 12:35pm flight to Ottawa.

Oh, yesterday I said that it cost $322 CAD ($234 USD) per person for the two hour flight. And while that was true, we didn't pay a dime!

Heading back to Ottawa

Well that went by quickly! Here we are on August 28th already, and we have tickets on Porter Airlines to fly to Ottawa this afternoon.

And we're taking grandson Cameron (14) with us for a week with Grandma and Grandpa.

Splashifax Water Park

We always give experience gifts to the grandkids for their birthdays, and granddaughter Sadie has her 12th birthday coming up this Friday. Unfortunately, we have to fly to Ottawa on Thursday so we took Sadie and her friend Violet to her birthday outing yesterday.

She chose to go to Splashifax Water Park.

We ended up getting a decent rain

Probably not enough to remove the hiking restrictions here in Nova Scotia, but better than nothing. We've only got another two days here, so it really doesn't matter much to us anymore.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to Blue Beach. It's not a swimming beach, it's a beach where they have found a lot of fossils over the years.

Big forest fire

There's a massive forest fire burning about 75 kms (47 miles) west of here. Nova Scotia doesn't normally have a problem with forest fires, but this summer has been particularly dry. They've even had some evacuations called.

Yesterday, there was a big cloud of smoke coming through the Annapolis Valley...

A good day for ice cream!

Saturday was another beautiful day here in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley.

Ruth and I went for an 8 km (5 mile) walk from the house into the nearby town of Wolfville. 

Valle de Bravo water levels

We will arrive back in Mexico on October 8th, just over six weeks from now.

So I was thinking about the lake at Valle de Bravo, which is the place where we will be renting a house when we return. When we left there in early May, the water level was really low.

It's all totally free!

Yesterday was another beautiful day.

Lindsey took us to Aylesford Lake Beach. It's a municipal park with a nice sandy beach, and kayak rentals. And the cost? Amazingly, it's all totally free!

That's a great workout!

Yesterday, we took Lindsey and the family to the OnTree Adventure Park. It's a really fun family activity center with zip lines and obstacle courses that run through the tree tops in the forest.

We had been there three years ago, but Lindsey had been working at the time, so she wasn't able to make it. But the rest of us had such a good time, we wanted to return... with Lindsey!

Arrived back in Canada

We had breakfast in the premium lounge at Barcelona Airport then relaxed there for a couple of hours before our flight. With this new Scotiabank Passport Infinite Privilege Visa card that we've got, we each get 10 lounge passes annually, so now we don't mind using them for the occasional airport breakfast as well. These will come in handy over the course of a year!

I had booked this WestJet flight from Barcelona to Halifax because it was really cheap.

Well that was an interesting night. One that we wouldn't want to repeat!

We had planned to spend last night in Barcelona Airport waiting for our 11:15am flight to Halifax, Canada.

Instead, we spent it at a hospital in Barcelona!

A gorgeous day in London

Really lucky to have such a great day in London. The temperature was about 25C (77F) and sunny. Just perfect, and so of course there were lots of other people enjoying a beautiful Sunday as well.

We didn't go downtown though. We just spent the day with Ruth's aunt, and did a nice long walk to Victoria Park.

Day 16 - Sea day and arrived back in England

Just another day at sea on Friday. Regular schedule, and in the evening they had a ventriloquist as the entertainment and he was really good. He had been a performer on the America's Got Talent television show. Very funny.

Oh, and I took some photos of the library on board the ship.

Day 15 - Sea day. Would we do another cruise?

Another day of looking out and seeing nothing but the sea. It's been much calmer than it was when we did our last three sea days in a row headed the opposite way towards Greenland.

We actually saw some sea life yesterday for the first time. We were on the elliptical machines in the gym overlooking the bow when I spotted three or four dolphins (or porpoises?) in a group off to the side.