Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure(s) 2024 Part 2 – O Canada Edition: Day 9 Prince Edward Island (9/16)

Where We Are Once Again Schlepped Around From Here To There For The Entire Day.

But At Least We Had A Beaver Tail

And Anne Of Green Gables, That Too.

Knowing absolutely nothing about Prince Edward Island (PEI) other than it’s the site of the “Anne Of Green Gables” books (by Lucy Maud Montgomery) that I read and re-read fairly endlessly when I was 12, I had no expectations as to what it was like (other than what I vaguely recall from the books I read almost 60 years ago.

We thought we had this bus-reserved-seat thing down pretty well. Andy told the bus-ticket person we needed to reserve seats near the front of the bus, the bus-ticket person made the note, and we thought we were good.

When our bus number was called, all sorts of confusion occurred once we exited the gangway. We lost the rest of the group as we wandered through the cruise terminal, and ended up being one of the last people on the bus. There was no reserved seats for us. The bus driver said, “We had 6 reserved seats and they’re all filled”. Obviously, they did not check the reservations against the room numbers. Good news: there was still a single seat in the second row, and another right behind that. Bad news: decent photos through the windows were not going to happen.

The ship was docked in Charlottetown, PEI. Whenever the tour guide starts the tour by pointing out ordinary structures (the middle school, the shopping plaza with a Walmart and a Home Depot), we’ve discovered this does not bode well. A nice enough town, the largest on PEI (40K) that gets a ton of snow every winter.

Farming is a big part of the PEI economy, with potatoes being the biggest crop. This meant that as soon as we left the city limits, the scenery consisted of nice rolling hills and farmland.

To our surprise, today’s tour included lunch! Which was, of course, a lobster roll and potato salad. Fortunately, there was also the choice of chicken salad and potato salad, or some vegetarian option (with potato salad (you see the recurring theme here)). The tour guide tallied up all the choices, and, I assumed, phoned it in to the restaurant.

Our first stop was at the Marine Rail Historical Park – mostly a bathroom break, but also a photo op for the Confederation Bridge that connects PEI to New Brunswick ($25 toll each way, but paid only on the way back to PEI). There’s a monument to the ferry service that existed before the bridge was built.

Next, we were off to the Gateway Village, that had a nice gift shop and a statue to Anne of Green Gables.

You could dress up as Anne in period costumes (came in assorted sizes and included a hat with attached red braids), and have a friend take your picture. I’m a big Anne Shirley, but not that big.

The lobster industry is another big part of the economy on PEI; everyone was offered a taste of lobster potato chips by the staff. Since lobster is about as unkosher as any food item can get, we declined. We said, “We don’t eat lobster”, to which the staffer replied, “YOU DON’T EAT LOBSTER!?!”. Nope, still don’t, hasn’t changed.

On we drove to Cavendish, the town where Lucy Maud Montgomery lived and the setting for the Anne of Green Gables books. We stopped at Cavendish beach for a photo op – you can see how red the soil is on PEI by the red cliffs:

Cavendish beach off the Gulf of St. Lawrence

Hurricane Fiona hit PEI in 2022 and did some serious damage to the island, especially the crops and the beaches.

After the beach, it was time for lunch. Somehow, even though the tallies of lobster, chicken, and vegetarian sandwiches were known, getting a non-lobster sandwich turned out to be something of a challenge for some unknown reason. Fortunately, we still had plenty of time before we needed to board the bus when our lunches finally arrived.

Then we were off to the “Green Gables Heritage Place” (IMO, an awkward name?).

Lucy Maud Montgomery never lived in this house or on the farmstead, but some of her relatives did. She visited frequently and used the farmstead as the inspiration for the location of the books.

Keep in mind that I was the one who had read these books all those years ago. Andy had not. So while seeing this place brought back memories of the books in my mind, it didn’t mean much of anything to him. What a good sport!

We had plenty of time to share a beaver tail pastry before boarding the bus. I’m going to save the photo of the beaver tail for the very end, so it’ll be the cover photo for the blog. For the uninitiated, a beaver tail seems to me to be a flat doughnut with yummy stuff on top.

We got one with Nutella, peanut butter sauce, and Reese’s Pieces. They make it for you on the spot. It was super hot and hard to figure out how to eat it without getting burned fingers. Utensils were nowhere to be found. We forged ahead and managed to make it disappear pretty quickly. UNBELIEVABLY GOOD.

On the way back to the ship, we passed by the cemetery where Lucy Maud Montgomery is buried. Here is an awkward photo of her grave, taken through the window as we drove by, and I’m trying not have a seat mate photobomb:

Lucy Maud Montgomery’s grave – the two cone shaped everygreen bushes with the flower bed in front

I tried to get some photos of the countryside. This was the best I could do:

We arrived back at the cruise terminal something after 5:00. We didn’t have a lot of time to look at the shops, because all-aboard time was 5:30.

Tomorrow is a sea day. Wednesday, 9/18, is Portland, ME – our last port on this cruise. Some “Welcome Back To The US” immigration stuff is happening that morning. The ship’s crew has been working with CBP to set up the schedule to process all 3K passengers by 12:30 p.m. This should be entertaining.

Here is the beaver tail:

This was sooooo good. And unbelievably messy. I had chocolate under my nails.

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2024 Part 2, O Canada Edition Days 6 and 7 (9/13 & 9/14) – Quebec City

Where We Spend A Splendid, But Awkwardly Timed, 26 Hours In Quebec City

Day 6 Friday afternoon on 9/13

The timing of our “full day”/overnight in Quebec City couldn’t be much more awkward. The ship was scheduled to arrive at noon and depart at 1:30 the next day. Therefore, it wasn’t a full day during the day. Booking excursions was a challenge on all fronts – all the ship’s Quebec excursions were sold out. Finding a private tour that operated within the odd time frames took forever. I finally found one for Friday afternoon (9/13) from 2:00 to 6:00 from ToursByLocals.

It was originally supposed to be a tour of the old city. Our tour guide, Diane, reached out to me immediately to confirm the itinerary; I told her since we knew nothing about Quebec, we were sure whatever she had in mind would be fine.

And then she found out that the “Grand Prix” of Canadian bicycle races was scheduled for 9/13, which meant many roads would be closed off, including access to our ship and the old city. She came up with a different itinerary, which didn’t mean anything to us, but that didn’t matter.

On the morning of our arrival, the cruise director excitedly announced that the captain was able to dock a full 90 minutes earlier than scheduled! which still didn’t mean anything to us, because our tour didn’t begin until 2:00 p.m. But the people who wanted to walk into the Old City were happy, because they had an extra 90 minutes.

The view of the Hotel Frontenac from the ship

Diane our tour guide texted me to tell me that we had to meet her at a spot away from our ship, because she couldn’t get any closer. It wasn’t too much of a problem – we exited the ship and followed the Google maps directions that mostly followed the race course.

We found Diane without a problem. Her little white Honda was parked outside the main cruise terminal. For some reason, we couldn’t get to this cruise terminal from our ship.

Diane’s itinerary took us out of Quebec City itself to the suburb of Charlesbourg (pronounced Sharlzburg), and into a neighborhood with some very old houses, some dating from the 1700 and 1800s.

On our way, we stopped at a building mural depicting the history of Quebec City:

She talked about the French style vs the Quebec style of roofs. The house below is a Quebec style house from the 1800s:

It faces south, not the street
It has a steel roof
The roof extends beyond the house to allow snow to slide off the house onto the grass.

This is a more French style house – flat house front, it faces the street, and it’s very close to the street (not set back):

After driving around for quite a while, we opted to stop by a fudgerie (a fudge store). The store had a building mural depicting the “King’s Daughters”: about 700 women who came from France in the late 1600s to marry the first men settlers who came a few years earlier. Here’s a link to more info.

The fudge was fabulous. We bought a bunch (no surprise).

Heading back into Quebec City, we stopped by (one of?) the oldest hospital in Quebec. Some parts of the building date back to the 1700s.

The hospital was across the street from a military cemetery, where the soldiers who died during the British-French wars in the 1700s are buried. The wars finally ended in 1770 with the British retaining control of Quebec.

Yeah, there’s no English translations anywhere

As our tour drew to a close, we asked Diane for a recommendation for a restaurant for dinner in the city. On our way there, she drove down Cartier Ave with its colorful lampshades that are swapped out periodically, each one its own mini-art installation.

We had dinner in a restaurant called Cafe de Paris: terrible service but great food:

At least we had a great table by the open window on a beautiful evening, while we waited almost endlessly for our food to arrive:

Since we were not 100% sure of the actual physical address of where our ship was docked, we decided to take a cab instead of an Uber. Diane had assured us all the cabbies knew what “wharf 93” would mean. The restaurant called us a cab.

The street in front of the restaurant while we waited for the cab

The cabbie didn’t quite know what I was talking about when I said “Wharf 93”, but I showed him the address that Diane had thoughtfully texted me. The cabbie said that the best way to refer to it was “Quai 93” – pronounced “key”. Good to know, in case this ever comes up again.

We had nothing scheduled for the next morning – all the Celebrity sponsored excursions had been booked back in April. Andy had the brilliant idea of going to shore excursions to just ask to see if something had become available.

Lo and behold! there were 2 spots open on a 3 hour Quebec City tour that included Montmorency Falls! Even though it meant getting up at Oh-Dark-Thirty, we grabbed it. We had thought we wouldn’t be able to see the old city this trip. Problem solved!

Tomorrow: The Old City and the Falls.

Day 7 Saturday, September 14

We were indeed up and about at Oh-Dark-Thirty and on the bus by 7:40. The city was still cleaning up from the bike race on the previous day – the trash trucks were everywhere. Our bus driver managed to squeeze past them with an inch to spare.

Our first stop was the Chateau Frontenac. We had some time to wander around.

The boardwalk going in the opposite direction goes all the way to the Plains of Abraham

Our ship is the one on the right. I think that’s a Holland America ship on the left (Zuiderdam)

After the chateau, we drove by the Parliament building.

Then it was time to go to the Montmorency Falls just outside the city. These falls are taller than Niagara Falls {but, sorry not sorry, not nearly as impressive…}

I took a photo of Andy taking a photo of the falls and its rainbow.

This a view of the Quebec City skyline on our way back to the ship.

Once back on the ship, we watched the scene off our veranda as the ship pulled out of the dock. There were a flock of sailboats – one guy really took a HUGE chance by not getting out of the way as the ship backed up. You could hear the ship’s horn blasting away at the idiot – who did make it past the ship just in time.

The rest of the day was “scenic sailing”.

L’hit-rah-ot, Quebec. G0d willing we’ll be back.

Day 8 is a sea day, as we make our way to Prince Edward Island (which in my mind is associated to the “Anne of Green Gables” books.

Monday, September 16: Prince Edward Island

Amy & Andy’s Excellent Adventure 2024 Part 2: O Canada Edition/Days 3 & 4 (9/10 & 9/11)

Where We Saw Highlights of Halifax, But Can’t Seem To Count 10 Of Them As Promised, and

An Interesting Visit to Cape Breton (Sydney)

Day 3 Halifax

To everybody out there who really like Halifax, apologies in advance. We found Halifax to be: Ok.

We booked an excursion through the ship called “Top 10 Highlights of Halifax”. Knowing absolutely nothing about Halifax, this sounded like a great idea. It was an all-day excursion, so we assumed there’d be some kind of lunch break.

As the bus left the cruise terminal, our tour guide began describing the sites around us: a grocery store (“Different from *your* grocery stores!” – because you can by legal marijuana), a junior high school, and a few other equally mundane buildings, all on our way to our first stop: the cemetery where some of the victims of the Titanic were buried.

There are about 100ish Titanic victims buried in this cemetery, some of whom were eventually identified, and some not. Each of the bodies that were buried in this cemetery were had a number assigned to them as they were pulled out of the water. The graves are not in number sequence.

Apparently there was a real person named Jack Dawson (per the John Cameron movie from 1998), but his full name was John Joseph Dawson. Since he was in the 3rd class level of the ship, in reality there would be no way for a 3rd class passenger to ever meet a 1st class passenger. But that’s the stuff of movies, literally. We managed to pass by his headstone without taking a photo, mostly because we were in a group of 50, and we didn’t even see it.

This is a photo of the headstone of the “Unknown Child”:

When the bodies were retrieved from the water, their clothes were removed and burned. The person tasked with burning the clothes plucked a pair of children’s shoes from the top and kept them in his attic. Fast forward about 80 years, the family house was sold and the shoes were donated to the Canadian Titanic museum. After much detective work, the shoes were finally identified as belonging to Sidney Leslie Goodwin, who died at the age of 18 months with the rest of his entire family.

You might just be able to make out from this photo that the Titanic victims’ headstones are lined up in the shape of a ship’s hull:

Next up was a long (1 hr+) out to Peggy’s Cove, a beautiful little lobster fishing town, known for it’s fresh lobster rolls and scenic lighthouse.

When we arrived at Peggy’s Cove, the tour guide told us we had an hour before returning to the bus.

It had been 3 hours since the last bathroom break (before we left). The line at the bathroom was formidable. It was also after 1:00, so we had the issue of what to get for lunch that was not lobster (which we don’t eat). We ordered take out turkey sandwiches at the coffee shop that took 20 minutes to arrive. Of our 60 minutes, we had already spent more than half of it just taking care of business.

Andy was able to capture a photo of a schooner going by, apparently something that is a bit rare:

If we’d had more time, we would have been able to wander around the pathways just a bit, but after finishing our sandwiches, there was barely enough time for another bathroom break before getting back on the bus.

We headed back to the city for our next stop. We were dropped off on a street in (what I’m guessing?) downtown Halifax:

We wandered up and down the street a bit, bought something in a shop the tour guide recommended, and then went back to the meeting spot at the entrance of the Halifax Public Gardens. The Halifax Public Gardens were established by the Nova Scotia Horticultural Society in 1834. It’s one of the few remaining examples of a Victorian garden in North America.

Here’s the gazebo restored to its original colors:

This a photo from the “Wedding Bridge”, where people come to stage their wedding photos.

These succulents are dug up every year and kept in the hothouse over the winter

At some point it started to rain, so the group sped up to exit the garden and board the bus.

The bus drove to the top of the Halifax Citadel National Historic site – a 19th century fort. It doesn’t look like we have any photos of the view from the top (the bus didn’t stop and we were on the wrong side of the bus).

That was the end of the tour. It was a pleasant enough day, but not a “wowza”.

Day 4 Sydney

Because we booked this cruise kinda “last minute” (for us anyway), many of the ship’s excursions were already booked up for some of the ports. Sydney was one of them. Instead we booked a private tour through Ventures Ashore. This was our first time using this company (usually we use Viator or ToursByLocals).

Possibly there was some confusion on the company’s end – we met our tour guide, Bill, right on time after disembarking the ship, but he seemed to think there would be more than two of us. Nope, only us two. And when I handed our voucher to Bill’s boss when we exited the cruise port, the boss said he tried to call me. I had no calls from them on my phone, and I had wondered about that.

Good news: it didn’t matter and we were on our way.

The first thing we learned was that Sydney was on an island called Cape Breton. Who knew? Sydney is the only city on the island, though there are towns and villages.

It was a good hour to our first stop: the tiny postoffice in Christmas Island (which is not really an island), Nova Scotia. We’ll be getting our post card that we mailed to ourselves with the “Christmas” postmark.

Next up, the Highlander Village, where a small village was reproduced (maybe some of the buildings were authentic?), and re-enactors dressed in period costume worked in each building (similar and an on a smaller scale than Colonial Williamsburg in VA). Each house seemed to be in a different year in the history of Cape Breton. We spoke to a young woman in a one room log cabin house who’s story was set in 1850.

In another building, we spoke to a carpenter. There was an antique carriage in the work shed.

And here’s the pig. She was busy doing pig things.

Andy visited a couple of buildings that required climbing uphill and/or steps.

I think this was the general store, maybe?

Our tour guide had sorta mentioned we had about an hour, but between totally losing track of time and me having to walk a good chunk of the trail (the transport chair doesn’t do well in gravel), I’m pretty sure we had been gone about 90 minutes when we finally surfaced. Well worth the time.

It was about lunch time as we headed to Bedeck, where Alexander Graham Bell had lived with this family. Because we were running late, we opted for a diner instead of the regular spot he brings his customers. Good food, and we were in-and-out in 30 minutes! We were back on track.

Our tour guide dropped us off at the Alexander Graham Bell museum, where we spent at least an hour, maybe a little more.

Bell was a contemporary of Thomas Edison and Guglielmo Marconi; sometimes their work overlapped.

Bell was involved in the invention of the hydrofoil in the earliest history of flying in Canada:

We had seen a tour group from our ship in the Highlander Village. They had followed us to the diner in Bedeck, and we saw them once again coming into the museum as we were going out. Our tour guide said he’s always happy when he’s just ahead of a ship’s tour group, because then he knows that the ship won’t leave before that group is back on board!

On the way back to Sydney, we stopped a couple of times for scenic photo ops.

Just before returning to the port, we drove through one of the Native American reserves. Their leader, Chief Paul, has done such a good job of improving the lives of his people on the reserve, there’s a running joke (or maybe not) that the city of Sydney wants to recruit him for the next mayoral election.

We had a fantastic day in Cape Breton. It is stunningly beautiful, with super friendly people who are very happy to see tourists!

Tomorrow: Sea day (which is when I’m writing this blog).