Not paradise, but it'll do

As I mentioned before, I grew up in rural Nova Scotia, but I moved to Halifax almost four years ago.  The house I grew up in was surrounded by hay fields, and there was a forest just beyond one of them, which had a perfect little skating pond in the outskirts of it.  Inside the forest were more hayfields, which were perfect sledding hills, and there were the foundations of old old old houses that I used to explore.  Our lawn was full of perfect climbing trees, and we had an old barn that still smelled like hay and animals.  My next door neighbours owned horses, and I could smell the ocean from home.  It was paradise.

So I'm not much of a city person.  It's noisy.  There are no trees, no birds, no animals.  The ocean is a good twenty-five minute walk away.  Everything smells like cars and the buildings clutter up both my wide open spaces and my beautiful blue sky.  Although I do like being within walking distance of everything, and the city does provide more opportunities for people-watching.

That said, I guess as far as cities go, Halifax is probably a pretty good one.  At least we have an ocean, and there are little pockets here and there that are sort of like real places - parks and graveyards and such that at least have trees and flowers and things.  We have the second-largest natural harbour in the world, and if you get up to take pictures of it at sunrise it looks like this:

Which is totally worth it.  Halifax also has a pretty fantastic music scene, although I don't take advantage of that nearly as much as I should.  We also have a bunch of fantastic festivals, like the Halifax Jazz Festival, and International Buskers Festival (the largest one in the world), the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo (the world's largest annual indoor show), and a lot of others.  I'm always inordinately proud when my small city has the best and biggest in the world of anything, as you can probably tell.  There's also a really fantastic farmer's market, and the best used bookstore in the world (the one I mentioned in my last post).  So even if it isn't paradise, there are plenty of upsides that get me through until I can move back to my nice rural areas. :)