Halifax to Iona

N.B. This is one of a series of posts about my short trip to Nova Scotia for a friend's wedding. Feel free to browse forward or backward using the navigation links.
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Day 2 was largely a travel day. I took a shuttle van from Halifax to Sydney, a delightful experience with The Flying Scotsman. The company is indeed owned and operated by an honest-to-goodness Scotsman (although he drives rather than flies) and his Canadian wife.* (Apparently they haven't figured out how to put their toddler to work quite yet.) They were responsive and reliable, and personable as well. They provided bottled water and DVDs (with headphones) to help while away the time. The folks in the back row chose (500) Days of Summer, which was surprisingly sweet and funny. Although the van was full, it soon became clear that all of us were first-time consumers of the Halifax-Sydney shuttle services.

Once I got to Sydney, I rented a car. This went smoothly as well, and I got the amazing rate I'd found online. I asked directions to Iona on the way out the door and made two rights as directed to get on the highway. Eventually I was on a twisty country road, passing through villages named in Gaelic and English. One of the towns shortly before Iona was called Christmas Island; I assume this was their second choice, once they realized the name Easter Island was already taken. Or maybe they couldn't afford the requisite Moai.

The B&B was directly across from the reception hall, so I walked over there and offered my services. At 5 pm, I feared this might be an empty gesture, but it turns out that they had not yet begun to decorate, as John Paul Jones might have said.

I got to put up some hooks over the windows so the tall folks could hang up Christmas lights and a hand-made wedding banner reading "Mairidh gaol is ceol" (Love and music will last).

I really liked the groom's brother's mischievous mis-translation though (marriage jail, heart is cool) - all the funnier of course because his marriage appears to be a strong and happy one of long duration. In fact, the groom's sister-in-law was talking at one point about how every time she thought her husband had fully "corrupted" her, he came up with something new -- I think she said the latest "corruption" is that she now loves motorbikes as much as he does!

But I digress. Getting back to the decorating process, we arranged the tables and chairs as directed by the groom in a nice fan shape so everyone would have a good view, decked the tables out with cloths, and then put scads and scads of flowers - both wildflowers and commercial flowers - into vases on each table.

The effect was quite nice:

Afterward, I returned to the B&B and listened to Ursula LeGuin's Gifts a bit before I fell asleep.

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FN* A union of Nova Scotia with Senex Scotia, perhaps?

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