We love Annapolis Royal

Annapolis Royal is the oldest European settlement in North America, dating back to the early 1600s. This area is full of history, mostly battles between British the French and the native peoples of the area. This French fort dates to 1635 and has earthworks now covered in grass, cannons facing out to the sea, and a graveyard with stones so faded we couldn't read the inscriptions on most of them.

The graveyard is entered through an ancient turnstile that still works. There are graveyards like this in every little town, some of them quite large.

Today Annapolis Royal is a bucolic place with cute little stores and coffee shops and gorgeous wooden houses. We stayed in this one and spent most of the morning walking around town and admiring the ambience.

You can see the trees and ocean view reflected in the window here.

Here's Harry striking up a conversation with the locals after seeing some Green Party election signs on their houses. Turns out they are also imports from the United States. The people here are incredibly friendly and welcoming.

The town has a couple of real estate offices and we were blown away by the house prices in this area. I don't know if you can read this ad but it's a historic home with river views on one acre with 5 bedrooms, 2.5 baths and a formal dining room, plus a guest cottage and workshop. The price for all of this is $279,000--about what you'd pay for a tiny condo in Victoria.

We spent the afternoon in the Historic gardens, built over the past 30 years by a dedicated bunch of people. 

It's set on about 7 acres overlooking the salt marsh and dikes and has several historic gardens including the Governor's garden, a Victorian themed spot and an innovative garden showing new ways of growing vegetables and flowers. We were under the impression that it gets very cold in Nova Scotia but it turns out that the temperatures don't really get all that low in this part of the province.

This is the Acadian garden built around a replica of an Acadian home with thatched roof. It gave such a clear idea about how the early French settlers lived.

We like this area so much that we've decided to stay a few more days and explore further, rather than heading off to Cape Breton.