2 Best Sights in South Shore and Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia

Downriver from Annapolis Royal is this reconstruction of Sieur de Monts and Samuel de Champlain's fur-trading post. The French set up shop here in 1605—two years before the English established Jamestown—making this the first permanent European settlement north of Florida. Port Royal also set other New World records, claiming the first tended crops, the first staged play, the first social club, and the first water mill. Unfortunately, it didn't have the first fire department: the original fortress burned down within a decade. At this suitably weathered replica, which is ringed by a log palisade, you're free to poke around the forge, inspect the trading post, pull up a chair at the dining table, or simply watch costumed interpreters perform traditional tasks in the courtyard. The heritage of the Mi'Kmaq people, who assisted the early settlers, can be explored in a wigwam.

Added to UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 2012, this site commemorates the expulsion of the Acadians by the British in 1755. The tragic story is retold at the visitor center through artifacts and an innovative multimedia presentation that depicts Le Grand Dérangement from both a civilian and military perspective. The latter is shown in a wraparound theater that's modeled on a ship's interior. A bronze statue of Evangeline, the title character of Longfellow's tear-jerking epic poem, stands outside a memorial stone church that contains Acadian genealogical records. The manicured grounds have a garden, apple orchards, a duck pond, and, appropriately enough, French weeping willows.