The Bayside Cafe

A great place for breakfast when you drive up into Cape Breton! These ladies serve up the best baked goods in an atmosphere that makes you feel like you're home (or at your grandmother's house!). 

Check out these biscuits. They also serve scones, muffins, full breakfasts, soups, sandwiches, and pies. Always hospitable.

The Bayside Cafe is located on the main road up the center of Cape Breton (9657 Trans-Canada Hwy 105) in Whycocomagh in Cape Breton, just about 30 minutes after the Canso Causeway and on the way to Baddeck.

Uisge Ban Falls Provincial Park

Another provincial park, this one in Victoria County in Cape Breton, only a few miles from Baddeck. The park is easily reachable by car and offers a spectacular water falls and hiking trails along the river through a wonderful forest.

The forest path along the river is littered with large rocks, some of which are entwined with the roots of trees. How in the world could a tree survive and grow in that location? 

The 20-minute walk leads up the river ravine into a rock-walled chasm that grows deeper and deeper, with sides reaching 500 feet at the falls. The Uisge Ban Falls tumble down in two stages - impossible to photograph adequately - and offer lots of viewing angles. 

There is a longer hike back to the parking lot, through a mile or two of sugar maple (seen here), birch, spruce and white pine. Loads of lichens and mosses and nothing but the sounds of birds, small mammals and the river. Definitely one of our favorite places.

St. Pierre, Cape Breton

It's easy to waste a day doing nothing in Nova Scotia. We spent one day in St. Pierre, a little town on the main road from the Canso Causeway to Syndey.  "Little" means no stoplight and a one-lane bridge on the main route.

Cape Breton is a mix of peoples and St. Pierre is evidence. Once named San Pedro, then St. Pierre, Cape Breton also hosts Irish (Gaelic) and Scots as well. The music here is fantastic.


St. Pierre is best known for the small canal that links the Bras D'Or Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. They're not really lakes, but large inland seas with salt water. But the lakes are protected, so there are few waves and only a small tide. This is a sea kayakers' paradise.

We visited Battery Park, one of the many Provincial parks in Nova Scotia, which lies along both sides of the canal. Campers park along the seacoast and picnic areas with tables line the canal. The park warden was a very helpful college student.

The local lobster boats park right in the canal, since the waters are protected. Most of the fisherman are done checking their traps by noon. We could see them unloading crates of live lobster to the refrigerated trucks, which would take them to market and someone's table that night. Of course, you can buy lobster right off the boats if you want (cheap).

The canal has a system of locks so boats can get in and out of the lake.  Here the seaside locks are closed and the lakeside locks are open in the distance.
Looks like this is also a great place for fishing.





We're always on the lookout for good fish and chips. Believe it or not, Chubby's in St. Pierre's wins the prize for us. Best we've had yet.

Shaw Point Park, Isle Madame

Our first post!
Monday was Victoria Day in Canada, a national holiday and the unofficial start of the summer beach/cottage season. So, we traveled to Isle Madame with 3 friends and had a beach picnic.

What we imagined would be an obscure, out-of-the-way shore park turned out to be a highly popular beach retreat for locals.

Homemade pizza with salmon, goat cheese, dill and capers, plus fresh fruit, Gorgonzola cheese, ice tea and coffee. Then, a long walk on the beach, wading in water still in the 50s.

Best of all (for all the kids) was the swimming hole behind the beach, where the river wound its way to the ocean and the water was warm.