Thursday Tidbits

Posted on July 25, 2019 under Thursday Tidbits with no comments yet

Athena and Ivory

 

“I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream.”

Ice Cream. Howard Johnson.

I’m absolutely incorrigible.

I arrived home in early June after walking the Camino. With the exception of my marathon years, I was probably in the best shape of my life. My weight dropped below 170 lbs for the first time in a decade and I was lean and mean.

Now I’m just mean.

Walking 713K required a great deal of fuel. When you’re walking 31K a day, you can eat just about anything (which I did!) and your body will burn it up. But when you’re not walking all day, every day and you keep eating like you were on the Camino, bad things happen. Look no further than your belt buckle.

I have had the pleasure of spending the month of July with two lovely 11 year old ladies from Montreal. They’re leaving for home on Sunday which is bittersweet. We’ve had a lot of adventures. They’ve kept me on my toes. We’ve gone to the beach frequently; played board games, visited the library and did a big trip around the Cabot Trail. But the primary occupation every day was the quest for ice cream.

Someone (not me) promised the girls that they could have ice cream every day of their stay in Antigonish. That’s 30 days. I am not one to shirk my duties lightly. I took this as an order and not a suggestion.

I’m sure we didn’t get to every single ice cream stand but we got to most of them. Michelle’s Grill in the mall parking lot was on our list. Besides ice cream, Michelle also serves a delicious pineapple curry chicken stir fry, my personal favourite on her menu. The Koala Cone is dangerously situated about a 4 minute crawl from our apartment. We got to know the staff very well. Just off of the far end on Main Street on Adams Street is Granny’s Antiques and Gifts. Granny’s greatest gift is ice cream!

On our way to Bayfield to go swimming, we often stopped in at Brosha’s Short Stoppe to get our daily fix, especially if it happened to be a Monday. You see, when you’re an” ice cream hunter” you get to know the hours of operation of ice cream stands and on Mondays, the ice cream stand at the Bayfield Community Centre down at the wharf is closed. We had many pleasant walks along Bayfield beach to go over to the wharf.

No drive to Arisaig would be complete without visiting an authentic lighthouse which happens to be the location of the local ice cream stand. Grab an ice cream just as the sun is setting over the Northumberland Strait. If you have a hankering for maybe the best seafood chowder in these parts, drop into the Dockside Café just a few steps away from the lighthouse. While you’re eating chowder or a slice of their homemade pies, you can learn about the life cycle of lobsters with the interpretive display in the café.

On one of our many day trips, we stopped in at Fish and Ships (not a typo!) at Ballantynes Cove. Besides excellent ice cream, they have really good fish and chips and the setting is beautiful. You can stroll over to the Bluefin Interpretive Centre while you’re waiting for your food.

Speaking of the Cabot Trail. I am going to walk around the Trail in a few weeks and I know for certain that I will stop in at the ice cream place in Pleasant Bay. It’s in a convenience store/souvenir shop just after leaving the village and heading south towards Cheticamp.

When we wanted to mix it up a bit (we’re not a one trick pony), we would go for soft ice cream. We paid our annual visit to Snow Queen Leisure World to do the rides and have hot fudge sundaes. We also made treks to DQ and McDonald’s.

And that, folks is how you are forced to let your belt buckle out a notch or two and don’t even get me started on strawberry shortcake. Because the strawberry season was delayed because of crappy spring weather (is there such a thing as spring anymore in Nova Scotia?), strawberry lovers were forced to make up for lost time once the berries ripened. We had shortcake every day for the first week of strawberry season. Honestly.

It’s not that I want to walk the Cabot Trail. I NEED to walk the Cabot Trail.

I swear to God that they’ll put a sweet tooth on my tombstone.

Have a great weekend and if you get the chance, grab an ice cream cone!