The Maritime provinces move at a fraction of the pace of Toronto or Vancouver, and a slow loop through Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island is one of Canada's most underrated road trips.
Halifax makes an easy, walkable start, with a working waterfront still busy with fishing boats rather than given over entirely to tourism. Peggy's Cove, forty minutes south, is the postcard lighthouse everyone comes for, and it earns the reputation — but arrive at dawn or in the last hour before sunset to have the granite shoreline mostly to yourself.
The real centrepiece is the Cabot Trail around Cape Breton Island, a coastal loop road that climbs through highland forest and drops back to sea level so often it feels engineered for scenery alone. Give it two full days rather than rushing it in one; the pullouts at Cap Rouge and the whale-watching boats out of Pleasant Bay, where minke and pilot whales are a regular summer sighting, are both worth the extra time.
Finish with a ferry or the Confederation Bridge across to Prince Edward Island, where red sandstone cliffs meet green farmland in a landscape that inspired Anne of Green Gables and still looks like an illustration from it. A traditional lobster supper — a community-hall institution across the island, usually a church or fire-hall fundraiser with all-you-can-eat mussels and chowder before the main event — is the right way to close out the trip, ideally at a long communal table with people you just met.
