March Break in Halifax

Pizza Delight is a standard pizza chain in Eastern Canada. I have always enjoyed their pizza—I grew up eating Pizza Delight and using it as the benchmark to which I compare all other pizza. I don't get there very often because I have to drive past several other pizza places to get to them.

Recently our local Pizza Delight has been offering a dinner buffet on Friday nights on a trial basis. So, we thought we would give it a go. We were glad we did! My mother, my three kids (only two of whom are old enough to eat pizza), and myself.

We got there about 10 minutes before the buffet started, so we had some of their new "Grill Your Own Bread." We'd had it before and knew that we liked it, but we didn't want to eat too much because the buffet was coming.

We were particularly impressed with the quality of the salad fixing's. The lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms, and other salad ingredients were lovely and fresh. The potato salad was excellent also, and the pasta salad was quite tasty.

Next we tried the pasta. There was a rice dish with veggies in it that was a bit unusual, and three pastas—one baked with cheese and two that you could put your choice of sauce on. All were quite tasty.

There were three kinds of pizza, plus garlic fingers. One of the pizzas was really odd and we didn't like it much, but the garlic cheese fingers were good. There was no donair sauce to dip them in which was a bit disappointing.

For dessert, they have apple pie dessert pizza. It was very tasty.

My 3-year old loved being able to go to the playroom, which was next to our table, and the 7-year old loves salad and the bread grill, so they were both very happy. Mom and I ate too much but enjoyed it.

The cost was $10 for adults and $6 for kids, plus tip and tax. Not unreasonable, but it would have been nice if drinks had been included.

Quick recap: Salad A+, Bread Grill A+, Pasta B, Pizza B, Dessert B, Price B-. Overall --- B+.

We went to East Side Marios in a large group (eight people). We got there just before the lunch rush, which was good because they wouldn't have been able to seat us, but I don't think the service would have been much slower.

We had pizza, chicken fingers, wraps, etc. Some of the kids had burgers. I had the pizza/salad lunch special. With eight people, we had a mix of stuff.

The main reason we went here was that the last time we were at East Side Mario's the kids got the neatest desert... it was three tiny ice cream cones and three different flavours on a nifty stand. I guess they don't have that everywhere though, because here the kids just got the ice cream in bowls.

The location was another reason—it was really close to where we were coming from. The front door, however, is not accessible by wheelchairs or strollers. In order to get into the restaurant, I had to push the stroller up the hill around the corner and into a hotel lobby. Then take the elevator down to the restaurant level. This was a huge pain.

As a testament to how slow things were, the rest of the party was still standing at the "wait to be seated" sign when I got in with the stroller.

The food was OK, but nothing spectacular. Same with the prices. The kids meals all cost about $5 and included a drink and ice cream for dessert. The grown-ups lunches were all around $9.

We won't be eating here again. There was nothing horrendous—everything was just OK though, and the prices were not good enough to be worth the bother. We will try another East Side Mario's another day though.

Lunch is the best time to go to Jungle Jims in our opinion, to take advantage of the $5.50 lunch specials.

Kids love the Super Slurpy Junble Juice and Smartie Pants Sundaes. All the kid meals cost about $5 and come with a drink, dessert, and a trip to the treasure chest.

I'm not sure why we keep going to Jungle Jim's because the service is always very slow. Today it was a bit better than usual, but still nothing super.

The food is always high in grease, but kind of tasty. The kids always order the smiley fries and never eat them. I'm usually there to help eat leftovers, but not smiley fries ... way too greasy for me, and not very tasty.

I know why we keep coming here... the kids have decided they like it. Mostly they like the plastic animals and plants that make the decor. They also like the little toothpick umbrellas that come in the drinks, which I keep taking away from them so they don't get poked into eyes. They like the live fish swimming in the pond just inside the door. And they like the dollar-store toys in the treasure chest.

I can live without Jungle Jim's... I just have to convince the kids.

For March Break, the museum featured "Pets At Sea" along with their regular exhibits.

The kids loved it there, and they wanted to go back again. This was good because we were using it as a test to see if the kids were ready for more museums this summer.

The Pets at Sea exhibit was nothing overly spectacular, but the kids liked it. They had a few birds, some monkeys, some lemurs, an albino hedgehog, a leopard cat, and a big box full of creepy-crawlies that represented things that sneak onto boats. The 3 year old was not impressed by the lizards and bugs, but the three 7 year olds in the group loved them.

The museum has many standard displays that were very interesting. The second floor Titanic display included examples of first-, second-, and third-class rooms with menus. Very interesting.

The Theodore Tugboat display was a set of models used for filming the TV show. The kids liked it OK, but zoomed past pretty quick.

There was a neat miniature model that one of the volunteers came over to tell us about. There were little tiny people made out of drops of glue. The guide explained how they were made. All of the guides seemed to be volunteers and were all very enthusiastic. They were great.

There was also a room on the second floor where the kids could play for a while, with sandboxes, a boat, and some colouring pages.

The 3 year old got bored quite a bit and would not have been happy without the animals. We later found out that the talking parrot Merlin is a regular. He says several phrases and was very entertaining for all the kids.

My 7 year old has since been to a birthday party at the museum where they went on treasure hunts and pretended to be pirates. The kids (boys and girls) all had a great time.

My mother wants to go to the ghost story night or the pirate story night, which take place on alternate Tuesday evenings at 7:30 and are free. She hasn't had a chance yet.

The cost was about $8 for adults, $5 for kids. We had some coupons so we got in (2 adults, 3 kids (7, 3, infant) for about $12. We were there for about 2 hours and could have stayed a bit longer, but we were hungry.

There were quite a few people around but it didn't seem nearly as crowded as some other local museums do during March break. We will definitely go back.

We love going to the library, and are at Alderney Gate every Saturday afternoon, however, I would not recommend the March Break programs unless you like a crowd! There were hundreds of kids at the library, playing little games and such.

Because of the crowd, the 3 year old stayed with me or my mom all afternoon. The 7 year old was free to wander about the library a bit more. (Normally I can see the kids in most of the library area without having to hold hands with the little one, but not in this crowd.)

Our first stop with the 3 year old was in the head-band decorating room. The library had pulled out all of the scraps from other crafts like stickers, wrapping paper, and feathers for the kids to glue on strips of bristol board.

One of the librarians was dressed as a fortune teller who read fortunes off a pre-printed list based on normal playing cards. The kids flipped over two cards and the librarian interpreted them. The 3 year old enjoyed this and went around saying "Tuesday is my lucky day!" for the next 2 weeks.

In another area, they had little carnival games like bean bag tosses where you could win prizes. You had to get a ticket and take it to a desk to get a prize, things like bookmarks, stickers, posters and small toys. We played some of these, but the 3 year old got a bit overwhelmed by the crowd and noise in this room.

The 7 year old loved the Sponge Bob Bingo where you could win a used book. He played this several times even though he did not win. Reading was required, so the 3 year old did not play this game.

The even was free, and at the largest kids library collection in the Halifax area, so it is very popular. We were there last year, but I don't remember the lines being quite so long.

The 7 year old had a great time, he loves bingo. The 3 year old had fun but got tired and cranky after a bit. We were there for a couple of hours, so it's not surprising. Long lines are not fun.

The library staff was great. We offered to help out before things got underway, but they said the only spot that needed someone was face-painting and not being artistically inclined, we did not volunteer for that. The staff are all very friendly and they seemed to be set up for the crowds fairly well. They had lots of prizes so everyone got something, which is nice.

We parked in the indoor parking because it was raining and being a weekday we would have to pay anyway. Total expenses were only $2, so it was worth the money. Perhaps not worth the headache though.