48 Hours to Impress Your University Child in Halifax

In the fourth installment of our “48 hours to Impress Your University Child” series, Vacay.ca Contributing Writer Diana Ballon explores Halifax with her son, Felix, who is attending Dalhousie University as a first-year student. 

Visiting your university child on their own turf can be tricky. The children may want independence from their parents, miss the family time they once had, or maybe a bit of both. Parents may also be juggling a fine balance between trying to hold onto the closeness they cultivated with their child, without, er, being too intense, as I know I can be.

The answer? Offer your adult children some fun one-on-one time, and the chance to have cool experiences that may be well out of range for most budget-strapped university kids.

DAY 1: FRIDAY

5 pm, Settle Into Your Weekend Digs: The most luxurious option in Halifax, the Muir is located on the waterfront in the Queen’s Marque district, where we had a view of the city’s historic harbour from our room, and were within walking distance of many great restaurants. The dining starts at Drift Restaurant, which specializes in Atlantic cuisine, on the hotel’s main floor. Within a minute’s walk are the following other choices: Peacock Wine Bar for wining and dining; Daryâ for Eastern Mediterranean cuisine; Salt + Ash for live-fire, Nova Scotia dining; and French cuisine at Café Lunette. We barely needed to step into our rental car thanks to that bounty of options so close by.

DAY 2: SATURDAY

8 am, Work Out and Relax at Windward Wellness: The Muir does wellness well. Its second-floor wellness “sanctuary” includes a 5,000-square-foot fitness centre, equipped with Technogym equipment, along with free weights, and other apparatuses for strength training and core workouts. It has a yoga and spin room with group classes for each offered twice per week, as well as a monthly sound-bathing experience. The facility also has a small pool, a cold-plunge pool, infrared sauna, eucalyptus steam room, and halotherapy salt room, so it’s easy to while away your morning here.

9 am, Sound Bathing: Wowing your child can be fun but also a full-time occupation. So you may need to take some moments to yourself. At the Muir, I did this at a private sound-bathing experience. (No other hotel guests signed up.) When I entered the Muir studio, Tibetan bowls were set out in the front of room, along with other instruments such as a 20-inch Chinese gong, a traditional deer-skin drum, a Brazilian nut chime, and Koshi bell.

“The idea is to be fully present with yourself and allow the experience to unfold, rather than be performance or achievement focused,” says sound practitioner and yoga teacher Giuseppina Colamarco.

“Our body is mainly composed of water and the vibrations emitted when you play these instruments travel through your body as an internal therapy or massage,” Colamarco explains. “The body is always working toward balance and healing and the vibrations help with this process, allowing blocks and emotions to surface and be released.”

At one point, Colamarco put the singing bowls directly on my abdomen, and when she circled them gently with a mallet, it was as though what was outside and inside me gently came together.

Certainly, over the following hour, I found my body relaxing, and I felt more open. I was ready to be fully present and open to the day.

10 am, Breakfast at Drift: Mum ordered “The Hipster” breakfast of avocado toast with poached eggs. Of course, she did. She’s hip, right? Felix ordered Breakfast Butty, a seriously generous-sized and decadent breakfast sandwich that had fried egg, Atlantic spiced fries, smoked bacon, and white cheddar all packed into two slices of bread. And my husband ordered the salt cod cakes. We all got exactly what we wanted to start the weekend.

1 pm, Throw Axes: I remember the uplifting feelings I experienced watching our kids enjoy a series of “firsts”; from their first step to their first day at school to their first solo play date.  So it was fun to have a shared “first” for all three of us — axe throwing at Halimac, just a 10-minute walk from the hotel.

When I first heard about axe throwing, I had pictured wielding a massive axe that I could barely hold: Think man in nature splitting a fallen tree. But at Halimac, the axes are surprisingly light and also quite small. Throwing an axe felt like a cross between archery (aiming for the bull’s-eye) and a tennis serve (bring your racquet/axe back, aim, and then follow through). Throwing axes turned out to be a lot of fun.

2:45 pm, Hike at Salt Marsh Trail: We then drove a half-hour to Cole Harbour’s Salt Marsh Trail near Lawrencetown for an easy stroll along what was formerly the Trans-Canada railway. As we walked, we saw a black-headed gull pass over a causeway through the salt marsh, and enjoyed views of water on either side. Felix stopped on the shore to forage a mussel for a project he has for his sustainability class at Dalhousie.

“Mussels require little feed for the amount of protein you get from them,” says Felix. “And foraging is a great way to minimize your carbon footprint.”

5:30 pm, Back at Drift: Returning to the Muir, the mussel carefully preserved in saltwater in Felix’s Nalgene, we approached the team at Drift to ask for a favour. Might they be able to cook up the mussel Felix brought back as part of his school project? The Muir is known for its warm and genuine Maritime hospitality, so not surprisingly, they didn’t disappoint.

The three of us headed back to the kitchen, where chef de partie Shawn Ridley steamed open Felix’s mussel in a generous slab of butter, with equally generous amounts of white wine and garlic. Then Felix sat at the bar to enjoy Ridley’s serving. The verdict? Delicious!

7 pm, Peacock Wine Bar: We happily settled into our semi-circular birdcage banquette in the cozy and intimate restaurant located right next to Drift. Even though it is a fine-dining restaurant and a wine bar, Peacock isn’t intimidating or pretentious. With the advice of the sommelier, we ordered a delicious bottle of Soave, and Michelin-trained chef Moira Murray’s many-course prix-fixe dinner.

Standouts of the meal included: the beef carpaccio; soy-and-maple-braised squash; crab ravioli; a strip loin with crispy polenta; and dessert, Peacock’s chocolate flan with cardamom shortbread and espresso. (If the $95 cost of a prix fixe “ruffles your feathers,” drop by from 4 to 6 pm, Wednesday to Sunday, for half-priced Nova Scotia wines. And while you’re at it, try some sharing plates and handmade pastas.)

DAY 3: SUNDAY

11 am, Visit the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21: After breakfast, we walked along the waterfront to the museum at Pier 21, a point of entry or depot for almost a million people immigrating to Canada between 1928 and 1971.

I first stopped to pose next to my now-deceased aunt, Ruth Goldbloom, who helped to found the museum in 1990. She has been immortalized in a sculpture of her seated on a bench outside of the museum, her tap shoes and immigrant suitcases next to her.

We then dropped by the museum’s Scotiabank Family History Centre, where staff can — surprisingly quickly — help trace when and where people’s family arrived in Canada — if they came between 1865 and 1935.  Although they weren’t able to retrieve my relatives’ actual immigration papers, I was able to discover that my great grandfather (Felix’s great-great grandfather) came from Lithuania in 1894. And I was also able to get a copy of my father’s birth certificate from 1925. (Although he was born in Montreal, the museum was also able to access a database with birth records for Canadians.)

1 pm, Head to Peggy’s Cove: Then we moved from history back to the present. Felix had never seen Peggy’s Cove Lighthouse, so in spite of a cold gusty wind and rain, we decided to visit anyway, and were rewarded by having the uber-touristy landmark — the lighthouse is one of the most photographed in the country – almost completely to ourselves. After a quick photo-op under a pure white sky, we dipped into The Sou’Wester gift shop to buy Felix a $10 T-shirt of the lighthouse. Our trip had a tangible souvenir to kindle memories.

3:30 pm, Check Into Your suite at Oceanstone Resort & Hydrothermal Spa: Only five minutes away, we arrived at Oceanstone Resort, and warmed up at their new outdoor hydrotherapy circuit, one of only two outdoor circuits in the province. Although Oceanstone has been a resort for about 30 years, the spa just opened at the end of June. And located less than an hour from Halifax, it’s a perfect place to bring your university child for the weekend, or simply for a hot and cold circuit.

The “Twilight” hydrotherapy circuit begins at 5:30 pm until its close at 8 pm, and costs just $60 (compared to $85 for a three-hour daytime circuit). Think hot, cold, relax, and repeat. There are several options for each, so you rotate between sauna, hamman (steam room), and two hot tubs for heat, cold plunge, or outdoor showers for the cold part; and relaxation in a meditation hut or around outdoor fire tables.

There’s something about doing the circuit in the rain and darkness that makes you extra appreciative of the warmth. It’s the perfect late-night, non-drinking activity to do with a teenage child. Felix was super brave with a five-minute immersion in the cold plunge, proof positive that it’s not just parents that wow their child. Children can keep on wowing their folks for the entirety of their lives!

Read editions of “48 Hours to Wow Your University Child” in Montreal and Toronto.