New England Canadian Cruise

I tend to give an impression that I didn't have a good time on my vacation because I focus on what I didn't like instead of what I did, so this post is going to be completely positive and all about the fun I had. Also it will be full of pictures with brief or sometimes wordy commentary. Most of the trip for me was caught on film so maybe someday when I figure out how to edit and download my movies then I'll post some of that to show you too.


Here I am at the Phoenix airport for our 5 hour layover. That's right people 5 freakin hours! Actually, I had a lot of fun. I bought that lovely yellow pashmina at that airport because I forgot to have a hoody for the flight (ten dollars). And I totally used that thing almost every day of the cruise. Phoenix was also the beginning of not having ice cream readily available to me. When we were craving, all the places had just closed. Also, I decided to paint my toenails while there and the people all around us kept commenting on the sudden occurrence of a glue smell. Oh well. We used the time to go over our port excursions as well. We are so prepared.



Here is a picture of our room. Not sure if this was taken on the first night or night but there you go. On the bunk above mom, you can slightly see our first towel animal that our room stewards would create for us every night. It was a seal.



This was our first excursion in St. John New Brunswick. This is the site of the reversing falls where the Bay of Fundy pushes the current of the river (can't remember the name) that flows next to it upriver. This happens at high tide and then at low tide it reverses. There was an excursion that we could have taken where you took a boat into the rabids. I have footage of some of these boats and it looked so fun but they definitely got very very wet.



The next part of our excursion was to take a bus to St. Martin where we saw a couple of covered bridges. The picture of Julie shows both covered bridges. I guess this is the only place where you can get a picture of two covered bridges in the same shot. It rained a lot that day but I like the rain. I slept a lot on that bus ride even though our tour guide (she was cute) kept talking and talking about a lot of silly things. There was a point when I just wanted her to shutup for a while.


When we got to St. Martins we went to a local restaurant by the bay to have seafood chowder (I had chicken strips, which many people were envious of because I got loads of fries with it too). Afterwards, mom and I went looking for seashells among the rocks until we had to get back on the bus. It was really windy but it had stopped raining. There was a small booth-like souvenir shop right by where our bus was parked so mom and I quickly went looking. The shop lady was very pushy and just wanted to sell whatever she could giving deals here and there. It got a little pathetic.



This is our day at sea. Julie and mom couldn't handle the motion sickness in our room so we had to find places to hang out in the middle of the boat where they felt it less. Julie and I got tired and took a nap on this couch. After an hour or so we woke up and needed to switch sides so Julie went over to the other side of the couch. I heard people comment to mom about it as they would walk by. It was pretty funny. There wasn't too much to do on board since it was so rainy and windy all the time so we played dice or cards. Dice was interesting as the tables we played really gave those dice momentum and it was hard to keep them on the table. We also took in a lecture on how to spot the best precious stones to buy. Actually, we were just sitting in the area when they started. There were evening shows that I found pretty fun. There was this dance and singing company that were lots of fun to watch. They had this couple that specialized in intricate and difficult lifts. The guy was really hot and hardly wore a shirt most of the time so hooray for me. Really, he was the only eye candy I was getting on this cruise as the average age of the passengers were in the upper 50s and 60s.


Our second towel animal. I believe it's a dog.


Our next excursion was in Halifax, Nova Scotia. We did a hop on, hop off bus tour of the city. It was great. The perfect way to catch all the sites. We took the bus all the way around the city without getting off to see what we would want to check out and then the next time around we started making stops.


We went down the road that has all the million dollar plus homes. So cute and colorful.



Our first stop was at the Public Gardens. I really like gardens. We went through it pretty quickly because it started to rain and there was a ice cream shop in the middle of it. Unfortunately the ice cream was somewhat melty and was just okay.


I decided to do some silly filming and saw all these pigeons gathered in an area on the lawn and thought it would be fun to make them scatter and get it on film. So tried it a couple of times but it wasn't as dramatic as I would have liked. Birds just don't like to take direction very well.


See the bag that I am using. I love this bag. I originally only bought it to use as my purse on the plane to carry more stuff in but it turned out to be perfect for toting everything else around all over. I kept my camera and video camera in there, sometimes my book and lots of stuff. Very functional and so pretty too. After this we got some lunch at a local italian restaurant. Julie hadn't been feeling well all day and decided she needed to go back to the ship so mom and I carried on with the rest of the tour.



We took a guided tour of the Citadel. It was really cool. It had great views of the city and harbor. I really liked watching the firing demonstration, which I got on film instead of in picture. After the fort we hopped back on the bus to the Atlantic Maritime Museum and learned more about the Halifax explosion that mom had been talking about the whole time. It was really interesting and very sad to read stories of people who lost family members. We were both getting pretty tired after that and it was about time to return to the ship so that was the end of Halifax for us.


That night we ate dinner kind of late because we were checking out the entertainment for that night. It was a jazz singer which we were not impressed with so decided to skip it. Then they had this huge chocolate buffet with so much chocolatey goodness, but we were so full from eating that we didn't get to really appreciate it. But it was very impressive.


It's a bunny!!





Our next port was Sydney, Nova Scotia. We took a taxi tour around the town. There really wasn't much to behold so that was pretty uneventful. Our driver was interesting to talk to. It's a good thing we had Julie to keep the conversation and information flowing. After the tour we walked up to the Governor's Pub for lunch. It was really nice and we managed to miss the rain while we there. They had the best desserts. Huge and chocolatey and so perfect, what I had been waiting for all trip.

When we got back on the ship it was kind of early and I had read that they were having movie trivia in the Observatory Lounge and so we all went to check out. Except I was totally jipped because they decided to just do regular trivia so i was bummed. On the upside we discovered a new quiet location in the Observatory lounge and we started to frequent it more often.


The Monkey was my favorite!!

The next day was another day at sea. We were pretty lazy this day. Slept in and then we actually had sun so we got to be out on deck for a little while, but it was still windy and cold so we mostly just hung out in our room most of the day watching movies. In the late afternoon, they had the guest talent show and the crew talent show which was really good. Those people could sing and the final crew number was so funny. We we laughing so hard. It was great. Julie still wasn't feeling well so she skipped dinner with us and since she was in our room when normally they would have turned our beds down I was deprived of my towel animal this night.



The next morning we had to go through immigration which took a long time and made us miss half of our excursion in Bar Harbor, Maine. So we took a bus through Acadia National Park and up to the top of Cadillac Mountain but it was all foggy so we didn't see anything.


After that we walked around the town for bit and got souvenirs. Julie and I were tired so we commandeered a bench to read while mom went exploring. The sun was so bright that day that we had to turn away. We just weren't used to sunlight anymore.


I thought this photo that mom took had a surveillance feel to it. It's kind of cool.



Just some other shots of Bar Harbor. I really liked this town. The harbor was beautiful. The shot of the schooner was I believe supposed to the part of our excursion that got canceled. We should have been on that boat.


The final towel animal. The snake.


I finally got Julie to get in a picture with a towel animal. So then we started messing around with it and having so much fun. We all got to laughing really hard. A great end to the trip. I think we took in a juggling show this night but I'm not sure.

So there were some really fun moments. Most of the negative things I have to say were dealing with the ship. I probably wouldn't choose the Norwegian Cruise line again.