Luxury hotel and golf resort on the Cabot Trail

The Keltic Lodge Nova Scotia on Ingonish Beach

This time I would like to tell you about our experience at the Keltic Lodge Nova Scotia, a luxury hotel and golf resort at the beginning of the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton report in Nova Scotia. The travel magazine Travel & Leisure counts the Keltic Lodge Nova Scotia among the 15 best hotels in Canada and even among the 500 best hotels in the world - a claim for a hotel that aroused our curiosity. I already knew the Keltic Lodge Cape Breton from previous visits to the Cabot Trail, but I hadn't stayed there at the time, just enjoyed the view. Because the Keltic Lodge Resort Ingonish Beach is located on a peninsula that is at the beginning of the Cabot trails extends into the bay.

Luxury hotel and golf resort at the start of the Cabot Trail on Cape Breton Island

Just a few meters behind the pay station of Cape Breton Highlands National Park, the road branches off to the luxury hotel Keltic Lodge Resort on Ingonish Beach. So if you want to spend several nights there, you will not come to your hotel without paying the national park fee. Since we planned to get to know the nature of Cape Breton longer anyway, these fees were part of our travel planning. However, I can well imagine that not all hotel guests plan it that way.

The access to the Keltic Lodge Resort on Ingonish Beach first leads through forest, through which a side road to Beach branches off from Ingonish Beach. It is worth making a detour here for those who only drive through the national park, because the view of the peninsula and the hotel is breathtaking.

Our room - all the amenities of a luxury hotel?

The street quickly becomes a one-way street, which initially leads past buildings before reaching the main building of the luxury hotel. We check in there, but are sent back to the houses we passed on the driveway. Not all guest rooms are in the main house. We are staying in the annex, in a room that could easily accommodate several families. However, it has more of the “charm” of a motel room than that of a lodge. I had imagined this differently. Admittedly. Nothing was missing - the beds were big and good. The room was extremely large with a sitting area, a desk, a wardrobe and a closet for clothes and suitcases. And the bathroom was well maintained, clean and had all the facilities you would expect from a hotel in this price range. The only thing I was missing was taste and the right ambience - and that's what I actually wanted.

Maybe the rooms in the main building are different - we did not see that. The main house restaurant, lobby, and large bar are cozy, fit in with what I would have liked for my room, and have wonderful views of the bay. Here you can experience beautiful sunsets and morning sunrises.

The restaurants of the Keltic Lodge Resort on Ingonish Beach

Breakfast is served at the Keltic Lodge only in the main house. And since I only need my cup of coffee in the morning before I am capable of any major sporting activities - and this includes the march from our accommodation to the restaurant - we drove in the morning by car to the main building. Breakfast is served as an impressive buffet. The selection of food was enormous and good. And also the service corresponded to what I expect in a hotel of this price range. The only thing I missed was that you could also order breakfast from the menu. As I said, greater physical activity is unpleasant for me early in the morning - and that includes the walk to the buffet.

We had a choice for dinner. We either eat with a tie requirement in the Purple Thistle Breakfast Room, the lodge's main restaurant - the menu looked very inviting, although the prices were correspondingly high. Or we eat in a casual atmosphere at the Àrdan Rùm restaurant near the branch, which was just a few steps away from our room and charged normal prices for large portions. Tired from our day trips, we preferred the second restaurant. The relaxed atmosphere matched the great experiences in the national park and along the Cabot Trail, and the food lived up to our expectations. The view of the bay and the north coast of Cape Breton Island was again very beautiful.

Conclusion: A luxury resort with everything that goes with it - but also a pinch of disappointment

Maybe I was expecting too much, but staying at Keltic Lodge gave me mixed feelings. On the one hand, there is the hotel's wonderful location on the peninsula, the cozy restaurants and bars in the main building and the casual restaurant where we had our dinner. On the other hand, there is the rather bland furnishings of our room, the laborious journey to breakfast in the morning and the fact that you can only reach the hotel after entering the national park. Maybe our impression would have been different if we had gotten a room in the main building? I don't know it. I think there are other hotels in the region that don't leave this ambivalent feeling. The Keltic Lodge peninsula is definitely worth a detour, but next time I'll look for a cozy B&B or a nice inn to stay overnight. Luxury isn't everything!

Travel Arrangements:

Parking at the airport

Here you can reserve your parking space at the airport.

Arrival:

Arrival by plane, bus or train*. Air Canada, Condor and Icelandair fly from Germany to various airports in eastern Canada.

Keltic Lodge
313 Keltic Inn Road
Ingonish Beach
B0C 1L0

Car Rentals:

Cheap car hire - book quickly and easily!

Hotels:

Hotels along this route * and on Cape Breton Island * You can book through our partner booking.com.

Do you already know

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Source: own research on site (we have paid the stay in this hotel)

Text: © Copyright Monika Fuchs
Photos: © Copyright Monika Fuchs, TravelWorldOnline