Three Days in the Valley

Lisa and I just returned from spending three days in the Annapolis Valley. While we got storm-stayed in Amherst on the way home, the weather otherwise was sunny and warm, a welcome shift from boots weather to shoes weather.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Maritime Express Cider in Kentville, in the former Cornwallis Inn, was a great meal. Olympic-level service for a tasty supper of Honey & Harissa Sausage Dumplings and Scallop & Squash Risotto.
• The Noodle Guy in Port Williams was an unexpected treat. We split the Cajun Shells with Sausage special and the Chicken Bacon Salad, which were both out of this world. An unexpected bonus: running into old friends from Saskatoon I hadn’t seen since the before times.
• The Bee’s Knees in Lawrencetown was a coffee stop in a place we didn’t expect to find more than gas station coffee. Rumpled vibe, stellar Chocolate-Tahini Brownie, great coffee.
• ArtCan Kitchen and Studios in Canning we found only because a clerk at the Acadia University Bookstore referred us there for art supplies. But there’s a gallery there too, and a colourful lunch spot where we enjoyed salad and sandwich.
• The Village Coffeehouse, next door to ArtCan, serves good coffee from Sissiboo Coffee.
• The owner of Port Royal Cheese in Annapolis Royal saw us looking through his window, sad that we’d missed closing time by 30 minutes. He let us in and then spent half an hour with us talking cheese, ultimately leading to a purchase of two types to take home for grilled cheese. That man knows cheese.
• We made the aforementioned grilled cheese with sourdough from the roadside Belle Isle Market, which operates on the honour system and sells a variety of breads, desserts, and seeds. The Olive Oil Sourdough lasted us only two days. So good, with the cheese, that we had grilled cheese for supper two nights in a row.
• We went to Valley Stove & Cycle because Lisa’s brother Tim told us to. We are in the market for neither stove nor cycle, but we learned more about woodburning stoves from Frank than I thought it possible to know. If you need a stove, go there. Probably true of bicycles too.
• An impromptu stop at Elephant Grass Printmakers Society in Annapolis Royal introduced us to Lorna Mulligan, an inventive creative, and to the work of the non-profit printmaking space. I hope we will go back and print sometime.
• Chatting to Lorna we learned about Andrew Steeves’ new adventure, Press of the Varying Hare. A quick email to Andrew, and he generously extended an invitation to visit the next day. Oh my: a custom-crafted temple of letterpress printing and bookbinding, forged by a man after my own heart, aesthetically and philosophically. 

Our home for the three nights we were in the Valley was a Home Exchange in Coldbrook that was just what we needed: clean, well-equipped, central.