Cruise
Last week (Sep 7-14), I spent the week in Eastern Canada on a cruise with the family.
Our itinerary was:
Depart and return to Boston
St. John, New Brunswick
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Sydney, Nova Scotia
Bar Harbor, Maine
This was my first time doing a "real" cruise and my first visit to the area. (Quotation marks because I've been on a cruise ship in the past, but only as a sort of glorified ferry where most of the services were closed.)
When on vacation, I have this nasty tendency to think "goddamn, everything is so expensive" and consequently diminish my enjoyment and/or memory of the event - either because of angst or my failure to suck it up and deal with it. Fortunately, this time I was blessed to be with family, who not only assist with those issues, but also because my parents are actually responsible people and likely to make a decent itinerary for our stops.
So, one of the things that stood out at first glance, for me at least, was that the cruise did not really cost an arm and a leg, as I expected it would. It was maybe $500 for seven nights, 20 restaurant-quality meals, and reasonable amounts of onboard entertainment. Sure, they try to nickel and dime you for lots of extras, but as someone who really doesn't drink alcohol, I didn't spend much extra.
Various family members took photos, in quantities of more than 1000, but to my knowledge they haven't been uploaded anywhere yet. When they are, I'll try to link to some of the albums.
At Saint John, most of our time was spent in a random downtown runaround. The attraction that should have been most interesting was the Reversing Falls, which is a neat little place at the Bay of Fundy where the ocean's tidal changes are high enough to cause a substantial portion of a river to change flow direction according to the tides. I say "should" because my actual experience was somewhat unimpressive, because we ended up hitting the place at middle tide. To get a proper appreciation of the place, you need to visit it at both high and low tide, and our schedule didn't have enough time for that.
The main highlight at Halifax was the Citadel, which is chock full of Williamsburg-style historical reenactments, including firing a cannon every day at noon. This was a lot of fun to watch.
Aside: Among the nickel-and-diming offered by the cruise line, they had organized tours and events at each stop. Their Citadel tour included everything in a standard admission plus a little tea-and-crumpets party to help the guests get into the setting. They wanted $59 per person for that package. After doing a little research on our own, we found that not only is the Citadel within walking distance of the pier we docked at, eliminating transportation cost, but a normal non-tea-and-crumpets admission is $30 per family. So we were amused to be paying 10% of the expected rate.
Also in Halifax we got to hear the story of the 1917 Halifax Explosion, where basically a ship that was out of its normal course, saw another ship in its path, and both assumed the other would move out of the way. Neither one did. Oh, and did I mention that the first ship was loaded with enough World War 1 gunpowder and ammunition to cause the largest non-nuclear explosion in history? The one-mile-radius blast trashed the entire harbor and a good chunk of the city. It was audible as far away as Boston, who was the first and biggest source of external aid in the aftermath, and as a thank-you, Halifax now annually delivers Boston's main Christmas tree.
In Sydney, we chose to take our 8 hour stop in a kayak trip, an hour's drive out of the city. So we didn't see much of downtown, but the countryside was very beautiful. Saw some eagles, a mink who was feeling very amphibious, and confirmed that I am really out of shape. Hope I can link to our pictures of the experience soonish.
Bar Harbor is located in a group of islands, which were too closely packed to allow our big boat to dock in port. So instead, we dropped anchor offshore and took small 75-person shuttle boats into the actual pier. Bar Harbor is the most rural of any of the stops on the cruise, so on this day we decided to go with the cruise line's offering of a bus tour around the island. The highlight was Cadillac Mountain, which had a pretty view as well as tasty blueberries. We also saw an interesting lecture about the local lobster economy.
Our itinerary was:
Depart and return to Boston
St. John, New Brunswick
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Sydney, Nova Scotia
Bar Harbor, Maine
This was my first time doing a "real" cruise and my first visit to the area. (Quotation marks because I've been on a cruise ship in the past, but only as a sort of glorified ferry where most of the services were closed.)
When on vacation, I have this nasty tendency to think "goddamn, everything is so expensive" and consequently diminish my enjoyment and/or memory of the event - either because of angst or my failure to suck it up and deal with it. Fortunately, this time I was blessed to be with family, who not only assist with those issues, but also because my parents are actually responsible people and likely to make a decent itinerary for our stops.
So, one of the things that stood out at first glance, for me at least, was that the cruise did not really cost an arm and a leg, as I expected it would. It was maybe $500 for seven nights, 20 restaurant-quality meals, and reasonable amounts of onboard entertainment. Sure, they try to nickel and dime you for lots of extras, but as someone who really doesn't drink alcohol, I didn't spend much extra.
Various family members took photos, in quantities of more than 1000, but to my knowledge they haven't been uploaded anywhere yet. When they are, I'll try to link to some of the albums.
At Saint John, most of our time was spent in a random downtown runaround. The attraction that should have been most interesting was the Reversing Falls, which is a neat little place at the Bay of Fundy where the ocean's tidal changes are high enough to cause a substantial portion of a river to change flow direction according to the tides. I say "should" because my actual experience was somewhat unimpressive, because we ended up hitting the place at middle tide. To get a proper appreciation of the place, you need to visit it at both high and low tide, and our schedule didn't have enough time for that.
The main highlight at Halifax was the Citadel, which is chock full of Williamsburg-style historical reenactments, including firing a cannon every day at noon. This was a lot of fun to watch.
Aside: Among the nickel-and-diming offered by the cruise line, they had organized tours and events at each stop. Their Citadel tour included everything in a standard admission plus a little tea-and-crumpets party to help the guests get into the setting. They wanted $59 per person for that package. After doing a little research on our own, we found that not only is the Citadel within walking distance of the pier we docked at, eliminating transportation cost, but a normal non-tea-and-crumpets admission is $30 per family. So we were amused to be paying 10% of the expected rate.
Also in Halifax we got to hear the story of the 1917 Halifax Explosion, where basically a ship that was out of its normal course, saw another ship in its path, and both assumed the other would move out of the way. Neither one did. Oh, and did I mention that the first ship was loaded with enough World War 1 gunpowder and ammunition to cause the largest non-nuclear explosion in history? The one-mile-radius blast trashed the entire harbor and a good chunk of the city. It was audible as far away as Boston, who was the first and biggest source of external aid in the aftermath, and as a thank-you, Halifax now annually delivers Boston's main Christmas tree.
In Sydney, we chose to take our 8 hour stop in a kayak trip, an hour's drive out of the city. So we didn't see much of downtown, but the countryside was very beautiful. Saw some eagles, a mink who was feeling very amphibious, and confirmed that I am really out of shape. Hope I can link to our pictures of the experience soonish.
Bar Harbor is located in a group of islands, which were too closely packed to allow our big boat to dock in port. So instead, we dropped anchor offshore and took small 75-person shuttle boats into the actual pier. Bar Harbor is the most rural of any of the stops on the cruise, so on this day we decided to go with the cruise line's offering of a bus tour around the island. The highlight was Cadillac Mountain, which had a pretty view as well as tasty blueberries. We also saw an interesting lecture about the local lobster economy.