Boston to Montreal, Saturday, September 7, 2019

The ms Zaandam arrives this morning at the port of Montreal on the St. Lawerence River at 7:00 AM. Again, a beautiful 58F day, moving towards mid-70s. Our luggage disappeared overnight from the corridor and we hope we can find it again when the time comes. We journey to the Lido Deck 8 for our final breakfast of the cruise. Crowded, but as our departure time is near the end of the group, 9:15, the cafeteria is emptying and we finally just headed down to our stateroom to await being called. At 9:00 Red # 2 is called and we drag our carry-ons off the ship. Unlike our last cruise, the bags are right there, standing clear of a mess and our driver is waiting for us.

Pierre is a 67 year-old native of Montreal, formerly an import/export person and, for 25 years, a chef. He embarks on a tour of this 44 mile long by 14 mile wide island populated by 2 million persons. Montreal is named for the 500 foot Mount Royal in the Center of the island. All the granite for the buildings has been quarried from this mountain, and there is plenty more to go.

Pierre takes us through the various neighborhoods, stopping at an Italian pastry store for amazing cannoli and then into the Hasidic Jewish quarter for freshly boiled bagels, still hot and covered with sesame seeds. This is like a mini-New York with all the various neighborhoods changing as the populations prosper, move out to the suburbs and are replaced by others. We drive past a Roman Catholic Church where three leaf clover are a part of the decor of the walls and plinths. This was built by the Irish, but as they prospered and moved on, it is now the Polish church which John Paul visited and led a mass in when he visited Montreal.

One note that Pierre was particularly excited about, the bicycle lobby is so strong that Montreal is probably the only city in North America where it is illegal to turn right on red. The bicyclists are afraid of getting hit - hence traffic is slowed as people impatiently wait to turn on red lights.

Our tour lasts about three hours and is ended by the highlight of the trip (according to Abigail) by a stop at the yarn store she had researched prior to leaving Omaha, Espace Tricot, La Knittere Moderne, where yarn was purchased.

Onward to the airport by 12:15 where we checked and weighed our bags, confirmed our seats and passed through immigration with the U.S. Gestapo who allowed that we could indeed return home. We are now checked all the way through to Omaha, the Duggans through Philadelphia, and the Coverts through Newark. We then stopped at Urban Crave and the adjoining Tim Horton’s. Tim enjoyed a cofffee and cinnamon sticks, Deb Duggan a salad, and the Coverts helpings of Poutine with bacon and wine. We enjoyed our vacation, our cruise, and now look forward to returning to our own beds, with windows to look out rather than our inside cabins with no view. Our view of the world has been enlarged and we have met people and seen sights that were new for all of us. We even got to places (Prince Edward Island, Halifax and Quebec City) that Deb Covert had not seen; this is always a plus as she feels less jaded with new experiences, and we feel like we have helped her expand her horizons. 

Boston to Montreal, Friday, September 6, 2019

The morning breaks partly cloudy and cool, but promising. We dock this morning at the pier for Quebec City, at the base of the rock of this city founded by Samuel Champlain in 1608. Champlain, a Frenchman, of course was already a war hero in the battles with Britain, the conqueror of the indigenous peoples of the West Indies, and the discoverer of the Great Lakes on behalf of the conquering European nations.

After a fine breakfast on board ship, our scouting party of five sets out to discover the famous walled city. We did not have a shore excursion booked today as we wanted to cover this very walkable old city on our own, and also because all the good, shore excursions were sold out before we thought to review them. We embarked at the pier and walked only a few blocks to the vertical elevator known as the funicular for the $3.50 per person ride to the top of the great rock and walk of this only remaining walled city in North America.

At the top of the rock sits the famous Frontenac Hotel, formerly the site of the home of the ruler of Quebec and all of French Canada. Deb and Deb slipped into the lobby for a look as there are clients of Deb’s arriving in the near future and she wanted to get a feel for what their $500.00 per night will get them. She was impressed with the sumptuous off the lobby and the general feeling of service.

Meanwhile, Mark, Abigail and Tim relaxed on benches in the park fronting the Hotel, people watching and soaking up the atmosphere, not to mention the sun, which had broken through the cloud cover and was making for a glorious day. We then commenced what this group of five does so well, shop in the myriad small shops that line the streets here. The crowds were beginning to grow as we walked along, flitting from shop to shop, occasionally making purchases and marvelling at the U.S. dollar to Canadian dollar exchange rate. By noon, we were beginning to feel a little peckish so decided to forego riding the funicular device back down and walked the steps (slowly) instead.

Once at the bottom, we again had streets of shops, cafe’ and restaurant choices. We eventually picked a nice restaurant with outside seating, but in the shade, and ordered our lunches: flatbread pizzas, soup, pasta, wine and beer were consumed in a leisurely fashion. At 1:30, we left to work our way back to the ship via more shops, an ice cream store and a popcorn shop with outstanding popcorn. More purchases were made, and we arrived back on board at 3:30, tired but proud that we had walked over 3.6 miles, up and down the streets of ancient Quebec. Every part reminded of the Willa Cather novel, Shadows on the Rock which depicted Quebec in its early settlement. Sites and buildings were still recognizable; the novelist had gotten it exactly right - but knowing Ms. Cather as we do, this is not surprising. One should read this novel whether or not you are intending to travel to Quebec City.

After our return shipboard, it was time to consolidate our purchases and find a way to cram them all into suitcases, as we had to pack up our luggage and have it out in the corridors prior to retiring, or at least by midnight if not retiring, in preparation for our arrival tomorrow at Montreal and the end of our cruise. We dined once last time in the Lido Market and then finished our packing before calling it a night at 10:00 PM.

Boston to Montreal, Thursday, September 5, 2019

Today is an At Sea day, meaning no port. We left last night from Prince Edward Island, sailing around the southern side of the island towards the east and then around the northern tip of the island turning southwest into the St. Lawerence bay, headed towards the St. Lawerence River and into Quebec City, a distance of some 698 nautical miles.

We spent our time on board today reading, knitting, playing bridge and eating. A true vacation punctuated with trying to find our team members when they wandered off to some other area of the ship. Abigail spent time finishing a sweater which she then modelled on board.

Boston to Montreal, Wednesday, September 4, 2019

This morning breaks cloudy and a bit chilly. Deb and Tim are staying on board this morning so Abigail, Deb and Mark rush to the Lido Market Deck for a quick and tasty breakfast and then through passport control onto the island of Prince Edward, the smallest of the Canadian provinces. Prince Edward Island (PEI) has a population of 143,000 and comprises 1/10 of 1% of the Canadian land mass. It’s capitol, Charlottetown, where we are docked, has a full time population of around 36,000 but swells to 80,000 during the day as commuters come in for work and shopping.

The three of us, together with 29 other shipboard ‘friends’ board a coach with Cindy Wenge as our tour guide and Don as our driver. Cindy, we quickly learn, is a PEI native and has just recently retired as the provincial prosecutor, in charge of all criminal prosecutions in PEI. Her legal training and preparedness soon become apparent as we motor through the countryside and she presents her case for the beauty and history of her homeland.

PEI is a rural economy with its biggest crop being potatoes. It is second only to Idaho in potato production. Next is mussel fishing - the province is the largest supplier of mussels in North America - and those you eat or buy in Omaha are probably sourced here. The other big crop is lobster, tons and tons of lobster. The island land mass is sandstone, not granite as others we have visited, hence a relatively high water table, and a slowly eroding shoreline. Charlottetown is where the original confederation of provinces meetings took place in order to form the nation of Canada. PEI population is descended from English, Scott, Irish, French and indigenous Mi’kmaq peoples.

The weather is rather temperate as the Atlantic Ocean does not touch the island shores; however winter is an experience; they receive an average of ten feet of snow per year. Due to the warming and cooling and the sandstone base, the snow often disappears relatively quickly, but there is a lot of it. In 2017 they received one snowfall of 18 feet! Cindy passed around pictures that were astonishing. Access to the island is either by a bridge - the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick, the longest bridge over ice in the world and costing $46.00 for a round trip ticket, or a ferry from Nova Scotia at $76.00 round trip.

The countryside is rolling hills with the highest point only around 500 feet above sea level. One of the subliminal things noticed by tourists but not quickly sensed is the lack of roadside billboards or advertising! Banned! Wonderful! Enlightened! (Is my enthusiasm showing?)

Our motor coach has a sign on the front which reads “Ultimate Anne of Green Gables Experience” and this is one of the selling points for Abigail on this cruise. She is all things Anne. We travel first to the site of the Campbell residence, immortalized in L.M. Montgomery’s books as “Silver Bush” the home of her cousin and best mate. This is still in the Campbell family and is restored to a museum of sorts. We step off the coach to a clearing sky and temperatures in the low 70’s, another perfect day. The Campbell house is educational recreating the happier moments of Montgomery’s early life; the grounds are very well manicured and tended. We finish up by stepping into the gift shop for a glass of coffee, tea, or raspberry cordial and a scone. Shopping is completed by some (most) and others sit on the restful outside benches. We stretch a bit and wander the grounds until our motorcoach is ready to head further on to the town of Cavendish, the town in which Lucy Maude Montgomery was raised.

L.M. Montgomery’s story is very interesting. Her mother died when she was only a small child and as fathers did not act as single parents in those late 1800 times, she was raised by her grandparents while her father left for the prairies of Canada. She began writing stories as a teenager while she worked as a schoolteacher and helpmate to her grandmother at the local post office, mailing her manuscripts off to publishers as she sorted the mail.

Her first, and most famous novel, Anne of Green Gables was written in 1908 and first published in 1911 by a Boston publisher. She went on to write many novels, including eight in the Anne of Green Gables series. After her grandmother died, she married a local minister and soon moved to Ontario, where she lived for the rest of her life. She continued to come back to her beloved Prince Edward Island to visit her friends and family, stating that her heart was always here. She is buried in the Cavendish cemetery and celebrated in the Heritage Centre we visited next. The Centre, newly opened this year, has a Green Gables home set as a museum, and interpretive center and grounds to walk and gift shops to peruse. Very well done and most informative.

As we continued our 26 mile loop of PEI, our guide began a short trivia quiz over some of the things we had learned. She asked 4 questions and the Covert trio were first to answer two - a 50% success. Either we are good students, we were paying attention, or we were close to the front and loud enough to be recognized. We will take the win no matter what. The coach arrived back in Charlottetown by 2:30. Deb stayed in town to meet with Deb and Tim, while Abigail and Mark returned to the ship to lunch and knit.

The shopping trio returned on board shortly before the 4:40 cast-off and regaled the knitting duo with their talk of big glasses of wine and raw oysters for their lunch. The shipboard hot dogs were excellent also. We cast off and sailed out for a two day run at sea, expecting to arrive next at Quebec City on Friday morning. We all retired around 10:00, set for a leisurely day ahead and now over halfway through our vacation.  

Boston to Montreal, Tuesday, September 3, 2019

We dock this morning a little later than normal, and will be able to leave the ship by 10:30. As we have no tours planned for today, we take a leisurely morning, with coffee in our rooms and then meeting at Lido deck for a hot breakfast of omelettes, scrambled eggs, pastries, and juice. Deb and Tim elect to eat in their stateroom so Abigail, Deb and Mark spend some time planning their day over coffee. Abigail has decided to remain on board ship today, resting (?) knitting and lounging. Deb and Mark decide to go on shore and explore the town of Sydney.

Technically, Sydney is no longer a town, having been absorbed into a regional governmental body in 1994. However, it obviously still exists. It is a small town with a regional population of 22,000 or so, occupying a portion of the Cape Breton Island. As we disembark the ship, we are greeted by a 30 foot tall sculpture of a violin or fiddle. Cape Breton has an Irish, Scottish and indigenous heritage and loves their fiddle playing musical heritage. On the pier is a large structure of small shops, tables and chairs occupied by a host of passengers and crew anxiously bent over their electronic tethers to find what is happening with the world (free WI-FI,) and a large hall filled with tables of craft objects, all being hawked by the local makers.

We walk a bit further into the town, finding small shops, looking at the houses for sale in the real estate store window, and just soaking up the local culture. As we are very set against the cruising habit of stop, buy souvenirs, and then hop back on board, we wandered the small stores, eventually stopping in one to buy some cute tee-shirts and visit with the shop owners. The two local women were munching on a burrito style wrap sandwich, and when we inquired, they directed us to a small cafe around the corner. We walked a block over and entered the Flavor Restaurant and sat to have a chicken, apricot and walnut wrap (delicious) and a bowl of Fish Chowder and home made toast, all washed down with a tasty glass of red wine. Deb declares the chowder the best she has ever had!

While waiting for our meal, we perused the map we had been given of the town and discovered a yarn shop, The Bobbin Tree. After our luncheon, we walked back a few blocks to the shop where, substituting ourselves for Abigail, we purchased some locally produced and dyed yarn. The walk back to the ship was slow and interesting; we passed a statue/memorial along the way on the waterfront which told the story of the merchant ships lost during the Atlantic Wars of 1939-1945 as the sailors from the area helped to supply the war effort. The loss of over 266 ships during the many crossings was a testament to the effort put forth by this small island and the price they paid for our continued freedom in the western world. We journeyed back to our ship and were on board by 2:30 PM.

We located Deb Duggan and Abigail who, we found had been sitting in the library most of the morning, Deb reading, and Abigail listening to her music, mostly napping and just relaxing. After their lunch they talked at length and decided to head to the lecture and demonstration on Chicken Marsala, presented by America’s Test Kitchen magazine, which they did, from 3:00 to 4:00. Tim, in the meanwhile, was out searching for another bridge game. We all then readjourned on deck to bask in the sun, read and generally lolly-gag around until we cast off at 6:30. Then on to dinner, again in the Lido Market for pork roast, deviled eggs, pasta, salmon and other comestibles, wine included.

Deb, Deb and Tim again went on a quest to find the mythical prow of the ship, going up and down steps, into unauthorized “Staff Only” doors and eventually finding their goal, but not without a lot of marching around. All were back in their staterooms by 9:30. Another lazy day that is becoming a hallmark of this vacation. As we stood on the aft deck of the good ship Zaandam bidding farewell to the coast of Nova Scotia earlier in the evening, we all remarked on what a pleasant and quiet land we had visited over the last two days. We vowed to return in the coming years to explore the area in much greater depth. The Nova Scotian Province is easily reachable by automobile from the American Northeast, and merits much greater interest from its American neighbors to the south. The views are stunning, the people friendly, and, with no language barrier, it is welcoming and engaging.

Boston to Montreal, Monday, September 2, 2019

Today is Labor Day in both the U.S. and Canada. It is also our first stop in Canada, Halifax, largest city in the Province of Nova Scotia. We dock around 7:30 AM, but are delayed as the ship has to clear Canadian immigration. Previously, each passenger was required to fill out a Canadian immigration form, but there were errors on some, which necessitated delays. As an example, at around 8:00, Deb and Tim were called from their stateroom to the “interrogation room” with their passports in hand to meet the inquisitors. It seems that Deb neglected to put the date at which they were intending to depart Canada on their form. Don’t want those heathen southern immigrants staying illegally in the country and sucking up all the good paying jobs and living off the largess of the hardworking taxpayers, eh?

Finally, by 9:00 the ship was declared docked and passengers were allowed to disembark. Deb and Abigail have booked a thee hour coach tour to the destination of Peggy’s Cove, while the other three of us remain on board for a few hours to relax, read, and hang out. At 11:30, Deb Duggan and Mark venture off the ship to meet Deb and Abigail while Tim sticks on board to continue reading. Mark and Deb wander the shore side boardwalk, looking at the craft shops and taking advantage of the WI-FI to catch up on emails and such.

The tour to Peggy’s Cove and the iconic lighthouse showed Deb and Abigail some of the loveliest parts of Nova Scotia. Even though Nova Scotia is one of the smallest provinces in Canada, it has over 4000 miles of coastline with beautiful forests and the rocky granite that is only a few feet under the soil of the entire area. The tour guide pictured below (who reminded Deb of our friend Kevin,) provided detailed information on the area. For such a beautiful but small area, this has been involved in three major tragedies in the last 107 years, two which occurred in the Province.

The first was their acceptance of over 190 of the dead from the Titanic tragedy of April 15, 1912. Most were buried in three cemeteries in Halifax, one created in the form of a ship’s bow just for Titanic casualties. Many could not be identified and were buried with only their date of death and the number that they were tagged with corresponding to the order they were pulled from the water.

The worst tragedy was in 1917 when a French ship carrying armaments and fuel caught fire in Halifax Harbor. Thousands gathered in the harbor to watch the ship burn (the crew had jumped ship when the fire started), only to lose their lives when the ship exploded with the power and consequent devastation only eclipsed when Hiroshima was bombed. It changed the face of Halifax city forever. Thousands lost their lives and over 1000 people were blinded by flying glass. Boston was the first city to send medical help. Haligonians were so thankful that, to this day, they cut a large Christmas tree and send to Boston; it is installed in Boston Commons each year.

The third tragedy was again not of the making of Nova Scotia. 21 years ago, an Air France plane had a total electronic failure and nose-dived directly into St. Margaret’s Bay, near Peggy’s Cove. All aboard died but the people in the area pulled together to help with the retrieval of bodies and putting up relatives of the dead in their homes, as there were very few commercial inns at the time (this was pre AirBnB). There is a lovely monument dedicated to the people of Nova Scotia who helped comfort and aid those who had lost loved ones. It is also complete with the names of every passenger and their histories.

Abigail and Deb returned to the pier area at 12:30. They quickly made the stay-at-home troops feel remiss in skipping this tour. Halifax is a city of around 350,000 in the Nova Scotia Province of 1.1 million Canadian souls. The economy is based upon the sea: fishing, lobster fishing, shipping, military port and shipbuilding are among the largest industries.

We walked the boardwalk and shopped the craft stores open in the pier complex. Due to the Labor Day holiday, none of the stores in the Historic City area were open, hence, no yarn from Halifax!

We returned to the ship and located Tim. Then up to the 8th level Lido deck pool area for late lunch of hamburgers, hot dogs, tacos and burritos, washed down with soda and wine. A return to the staterooms for a refresh while Tim went to the duplicate bridge group meeting (amazingly not located on the ship’s bridge.) We later determined that his team won and now he has a date for Thursday afternoon for some rematch play.

At 7:15 we all met up at the Lido Market cafeteria for a late, light, dinner. If you can imagine this group of grazers eating a “light” dinner you would conjure salmon, rice pasta and roast beef sandwiches. There was one salad in sight. We then embarked on a hilarious search to find a Titanic style prow of the ship to view the stars, trouping up and down the passageways, stairs and elevators, finding dead ends and Staff Only labeled doors. We finally gave up and tried to just go out on deck. Strong winds and rain forced us laughingly back in side. We browsed the shops, found a quiet library area, and finally headed to our staterooms for the end of another vacation day off the northeast coast at sea.