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A Visit to the Titanic Graveyard

Going to visit the largest burial site of those who died in the Titanic ship disaster while on a cruise probably isn't the best idea, but then you think of something better to do while practically fogged in at Halifax's harbour. We took a bus out to Fairlawn Cemetery, which definitely isn't near downtown Halifax but more on the edge of a regular neighborhood. You'd never guess that inside the modest gates lay 121 victims, some still unidentified almost 100 years after the ship hit the iceberg and sunk on its maiden transatlantic voyage.

Fairlawn is open during normal daylight hours, and on a typical day, one bus tour will be followed by another bus tour stopping to visit the site. The Titanic portion of the cemetery consists of three rows of graves that mostly match, save for a few victims' families who purchased their own tombstones for their loved ones. All death dates are the same: April 15, 1912.

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Visiting a Rush-Rush Tourist Trap: Peggys Cove, Nova Scotia

If you have a chance to go to Nova Scotia's tiny fisherman's hamlet of Peggys Cove, about an hour's drive outside of Halifax, then you must go. It's a town that fulfills your desire to spend time in a quaint maritime town, but as much as we loved our recent stop there, there is a major issue with Peggys Cove. Tourists are bussed in and out, with maybe 1 solid hour to enjoy the place.

The entire population of Peggys Cove numbers only something like 50 people, but they spend the warmer months raking in the dough from the thousands and thousands of tourists who visit every week, both by road tripping on their own or by big bus tour. The majority visit thanks to the latter, but with typically only one hour to run a marathon over the rocks, seconds to take in the views, and split seconds to capture each perfect photograph.

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Long Live Geeky Travel Statistics

What do you do when you're on a long flight with your own seatback TV and there's just nothing good playing? You turn on the "Airshow" channel, of course. The Airshow is the station that alternates displaying your flight's route map with other geeky information like speed, altitude, miles to destination and outside temperature. Tell us you love Airshow too?

Well, we recently went on a Carnival cruise with some family and were so thrilled to find that not only does the cabin television have the usual bow and pool cams, but they also have a channel just like Airshow ("Seashow?"). At any given moment, without having to call Guest Services or check a TV in the main atrium, we could see our ship's location plotted on the ocean, check sunrise and sunset times, view how many nautical miles we've chugged through, and—our favorite feature—discover the sea's depth below us (usually between 250-150').

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Accidental Travel: The Wrong Sydney

We always have a good chuckle about travelers who end up on the wrong continent by making an online booking to someplace with the same name, but we shouldn't laugh too much--there's just as good a chance we'll do the same one day.

In a recent incident, an Argentinean woman tried to book a flight to Sydney. We'd be thinking Australia, and so was she, but her flights took her to Sydney, Nova Scotia.

The funny thing is that tourists have ended up in the Canadian Sydney by mistake before. Perhaps they should start selling toy kangaroos in their souvenir shops and apart from some unexpected weather, maybe nobody will notice.

Related Stories:
· Accidental Tourist Ends Up in Wrong Place [news.com.au]
· Sydney, Australia Travel coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo of Sydney, Nova Scotia: dmealiffe]