The Order of good Cheer!

June 26, Day 11

We spent the day touring various sites around Annapolis Royal and enjoying the taste of food, food and more food!

Our first stop was Port Royal, a national Historic Site—a reconstruction of a small French compound begun in 1605.  In these early settlements, there were only men who worked in the compound getting things established.  To keep from getting bored, they formed the “Order of Good Cheer”, where one would host the dinner, and take great care in putting on a feast and an evening of merriment.  This is believed to be the first social club.  The Order of Good Cheer..what a great idea…Cheers! 

Our next stop was Fort Anne which is the oldest national historic site in Canada. In the 1630’s, the French built Ft. Anne, but Great Britain took control in 1710.  It was interesting to stand on top of the mounds and look out at the sea and understand why this would be a prime area for attack because of the accessibility by water.   There are old earthworks with a date of 1708—that’s pretty old!

In the museum was an original copy of the Nova Scotia Charter dated 1621!  Also on display was a huge needlepoint tapestry 8ft x 18 ft with 4 panels illustrating four centuries of area history.  The tapestry with more than 3 million stitches was completed by local volunteers, who spent more than 20,000 hours completing it.  Even Queen Elizabeth put a few gold stitches in the piece.

We then checked out the Annapolis Royal Historic Gardens, where I bought some Lupine seeds to plant at home.  This city is very conscious of preserving history, and you can see it throughout the city.

Lunch was at a German Café and Bakery right downtown where the owner Heidi, her husband and daughter put on a wonderful lunch complete with apple rhubarb streudel for dessert! Yummy!  It felt like the Order of Good Cheer!   Heidi’s husband is the baker, and we visited the bakery and came home with a bag full of goodies--coconut puffs, strawberry rhubarb turnover and an apple streudel hot out of the oven. (These are necessities for the Order of Good Cheer.)  
There is a dock very close to the campground and it was so strange to see the boats sitting on the ground at low tide.  We went back this evening and the tide had come in, so the boats were in water—The Bay of Fundy tides at work again….From the dock you could see the motorhomes in the campground—it looks pretty neat.

We visited the seafood market and bought scallops to bring home.  Then we went out to dinner and ate scallops that somebody else cooked for us…yummy again!
We watched the beautiful sunset, with a full tummy from all of the food today, and knew what it felt like to be part of the “Order of Good Cheer”!