2025-08-13: Immigration, Citadels, and Boardwalks

We woke up in foggy Halifax. We didn’t have a tour booked today so had a little slower start to the day. We woke up at 8:00am just as they were opening the gangway for passengers to disembark. We got ourselves cleaned up and headed up to the buffet for some breakfast. We returned to the room quickly to grab our gear for the day and headed for the gangway at 10:00am.

We got off the ship and started walking along the boardwalk outside the terminal. Halifax has a 4km boardwalk that starts just outside the cruise ship terminal. We popped into a few of the shops along the way. There were a couple of yachts docked at one of the wharfs. There were also a couple of old ships that have been turned into museums. The CSS Acadia and the HMCS Sackville. We didn’t go in them, but took a couple of photos of the exterior.

We followed the boardwalk to George Street and then took to the streets. George Street leads to the entrance to the Halifax Citadel. There was a Tim Hortons on the corner where the street meets the boardwalk. The kids were dying for a Tim Hortons fix. We were less than an hour off the ship, but had to buy them both a drink.

With beverages in their hands, we started our walk up George Street. There is quite a hill to get up to the Citadel. We felt it in our calves by the time we got to the top. We also passed Scotiabank Center which is right across the street from the Citadel. There was also a park with a couple of monuments in front of Halifax City Hall. One as a memorial for those who have died in the wars Canada has fought in. The other for fallen peace officers.

We made it to the Citadel. Due to the Canada Strong program, entrance to the Citadel was free. We made our way inside and started to explore the old Fort. The Citadel is an old British Fort that was built from 1828 – 1856. Well, the current iteration anyway. It’s actually the 4th version of the fort to be built on the site. The first version was established in 1749.

We talked with one of the interpreters who was dressed as an old soldier. He explained how the rifles they used were retrofitted from the old ram muskets you had to load by ramming the powder and bullet down the barrel of the rifle. The French and other countries started building breach load rifles where you load the bullet/shell in the base of the rifle instead. The British panicked that they were falling behind. Designing a whole new rife would take too long, so they found a way to retrofit their current rifles to be breach load as well.

As we finished his story, it was about noon. They fire off a canon at the Citadel every day at noon. We watched the reenactment start with soldiers walking across the Citadel grounds with the supplies. They climbed a set of stairs to the canon, loaded the canon, and then fired it at noon. It was fun to watch.

We continued exploring the various areas of the Citadel. Michael found a set of steps down to a dark room. Within the room were a couple of canons that were positioned to fire in the “moat” of the Citadel. A few minutes later a pipe band started playing in the grounds of the Citadel. We watched them for a few minutes. Patrick ran into one of his new friends from the ship and spent some time chatting with him.

Around 1:00pm, we left the Citadel and made our way back down to the boardwalk. We made our way back to the cruise ship pier while exploring a few more shops along the way. We also stopped at a Cows store to grab some ice cream.

Once back at the cruise pier, we went next door to the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. Pier 21 is one of the locations where immigrants coming to Canada via ship were processed before being admitted to Canada. It operated from 1928 through 1971. The museum had exhibits showing the history of the pier and detailed the experiences of some of the immigrants. May of them were refugees or those that had lost everything in the world wars. Many arrived in Canada with simply a wooden crate containing the belongings they could bring with them. It was an interesting museum.

At 3:00pm we made our way back onto the ship. We relaxed on the ship and watched it pull out of Halifax at 4:00pm. We didn’t have time to grab lunch while in town, so grabbed a snack once we were back on the ship. Because of this, we weren’t ready for dinner until 7:00pm. Patrick wanted to grab dinner with his friends so the rest of us headed to the dining room to grab dinner. The dining room was full and they were handing out buzzers to folks who were waiting. They said it was about a 30 minute wait. We weren’t going to wait another 30 minutes to get seated so headed up to the buffet instead.

After dinner, Amanda and Darrell headed to the “Marriage Match” gameshow. It’s called the Newlywed, Not So Newlywed game on Royal Caribbean. They have a newlywed couple, a couple that has been married a while, and a couple who has married for a long time come up on stage. They send one member of the couple off stage and ask some questions, sometimes intimate questions, of the other half. Then they bring the others back to the stage and see if they can match the answers their other half gave. Then they swap places and do a second round. It is always funny to see the reactions when the answers don’t match.

After the show, we did a quick round on the upper deck before heading back to the room and settling in for the night.