Last Day of Cruise At Sea

Our last day of the cruise has been uneventful and, thus, relaxing. After breakfast, I went to the Explorations Cafe, the library/internet center, to finish reading Anne of Green Gables.  I bought the book while at Prince Edward Island.  For some reason, I had never read it until now.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially having visited there just a few days ago.  The scenes were so fresh in my mind as I matched them with Lucy Maud Montgomery's vivid descriptions.


The whole cruise has had this relaxed feeling about it.  I have met more people this time than I have on past cruises, partly because I made friends with a couple who sort of "took me in" and invited me to sit with them at dinner and at each evenings' entertainment.

Ellen and Gary are from San Antonio, Texas.  Gary is a retired Air Force Major General who has had a stellar career all over the world.  One of the many things he did was be in charge of  the Air Force  Commissaries World Wide.  Ellen has also a long list of accomplishments as well which includes being active in politics.  She has served as on the city council and as Mayor Pro-Tem of Hollywood Park, Texas.


I have enjoyed our many conversations and will miss their company.


We arrive in Fort Lauderdale early tomorrow morning while watching the full moon set.  We will have sailed a total of 3049 nautical miles. 
 
Once off the ship, I will pick up my rental car and drive back to Orlando thinking about the many wonderful things I have experienced these past two weeks.

Charleston, South Carolina

We had two relaxing days at sea as we travelled 973 nautical miles from Bar Harbor to Charleston.  I didn’t book any excursions here because I have been to Charleston several times and have seen the Battery with the Rainbow houses, toured plantations outside the city, and visited other historical houses within the historical heart of town.  So I thought I would just wing it and see what I would discover on my own.

The cruise ship terminal is just opposite the old Custom House, and it is a short walk into the heart of the city.

I picked up some maps and visitors’ guide at the cruise terminal and learned that a free trolley was available that boasts it is “the most convenient way to see Charleston.”

The price was right, so I hopped on one that came right by the port.  There are three color-coded routes.  The one I got on was the Green Route which gave me a nice quick overview of the Market Street/King Street circuit.  I got off at the Visitors Center, picked up some more information and decided to go to the Museum of Charleston which is just across the street from the Visitors Center.

It is touted as America’s first museum, founded in 1773.  Among the first curators were signers of the Declaration of Independence and leaders of the American Revolution from South Carolina.  Having been educated in England, they had seen and admired the British Museum and wanted to preserve artifacts from the Low Country in a similar fashion.

I was surprised by the variety of fascinating artifacts and collections it displays.  Not only those that tell the story of the Low Country and its cultural and natural history, but an eclectic collection of guns, Civil War items, furniture, textiles, quilts, silver, many stuffed birds and animals, skeletal remains, an Egyptian section complete with a mummy, a musical section which includes the piano upon which Gershwin wrote Porgy and Bess, to list a few.

 

After spending time there, I got back on the trolley and went back to the Market Street area.  Here you find the City Market, the oldest public facility in continuous use.

 

This market is huge and consists of several buildings covering several blocks.  Since I was last here, the interior has been completely renovated.  It used to be all open air, with wooden tables displaying the goods.  Now is mostly enclosed and air-conditioned with vendors selling all kinds of jewelry, candles, crafts, food, and other things tourist love.

 

Featured at several stalls are baskets make from pine straw and grass with women sitting and weaving them by hand.

 

 

 

 

To complete my tour, I went to Hyman’s Seafood Restaurant on Meeting Street. It was voted #1 seafood restaurant in the Southeast by Southern Living Magazine Survey 9 years in a row.  Delta Sky Miles magazine named it one of the top five seafood restaurants in the country.  It has been recognized by several other publications and Food Channel Network for its great food.

 

 

 

Inside there are signed photographs of celebrities who have eaten here. One of whom is Martha Stewart.

 

Well, if it’s good enough for Martha, it is good enough for me…and it was.  I had a combination of fried oysters, clam strips, and shrimp complete with collard greens, coleslaw and hush puppies.  MMMM…UMMM good!

Waddled my way back to the ship to be greeted by these two pelicans.  Some people know my stories about pelicans and why I seem to run into them (or they into me) all of the time.

 

 

Bar Harbor, Maine

 

Sailing down east from Nova Scotia, we arrived at Bar Harbor.  We docked anchor off-shore requiring us to use tenders to go ashore.

I had booked an excursion to Acadia National Park, but it was cancelled because it was closed due to the Federal Government shut-down.

So, I hopped on one of the local tour trolleys for a nice one hour drive around the island, stopping to look at Frenchman Bay, passing by a number of old houses, and seeing Cadillac Mountain from a distance.

 

Back in town, I treated myself to a delicious lobster lunch.

 

 

After which, I walked around this upscale town looking into specialty stores and galleries which line the main streets.  One of them named after me.

 

I sat in the park enjoying the brilliant, cool autumn weather with the locals and watching boats in the harbor.

 

I am convinced that October is the best month to travel…fewer tourists, cooler weather, and slower pace.

Halifax, Nova Scotia

Because of some mix-up with the pilots who were to lead us into port, our ship was delayed landing an hour. This screwed up the schedule for excursions, many of which had a long way to go, like to Peggy’s Cove.  I hadn’t chosen Peggy’s Cove because I have visited it twice before.  Fortunately, my tour of “the Heart of Historic Halifax” was scheduled at noon.   But, our bus and guide hadn’t returned by then from the Peggy’s Cove jaunt, so we were put on a hop-on hop-off pink double decker bus with a substitute guide.

 

Our guide turned out to be excellent and very colorfully dressed in a kilt complete with a Glengary hat.

 

The first “sight” was the beach at the harbor…remarkable, according to Jim the Guide, because people are able to swim in this huge harbor because the water is so clean. 

He pointed out that these trees are growing out of the rocks because there is little topsoil in the area. 

Also, a hurricane went through Halifax about 10 years ago and destroyed thousands of trees. We saw a couple of sculptures in people’s yards which had been carved from the stumps of downed trees. This one depicts three eagles.

 

We then drove through a neighborhood of elegant houses, circled a lovely Victorian style park, and saw many medical buildings.  Are you beginning to see that there isn’t that much to the historic heart of Halifax?

However, there are two main historic sites.  The first is the Halifax Citadel.

 With the founding of Halifax in 1749, the first of four forts was constructed on this drumlin high above the original town. This aerial view shows its strategic vantage point.

 

The Citadel has a long and intricate history through the French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, War of 1812, even WWI and WWII where it served as transit barracks and an anti-aircraft command center.

 

Inside the fort stands The Cavalier Building in the center of the parade grounds. Once barracks, it now houses the information center, a gift shop, café, and museum.

 

We were there to see the changing of the guard.

 

From the viewing platforms, you can see the Old Town Clock which is one of the most recognizable landmarks of historic Halifax.  This garrison clock began keeping time on October 20, 1803.  You might know that the clock faces are different sizes.  Don’t know why.

From the Citadel, we went to the other noted Halifax historic place, the Fairlawn Cemetery, which has a link to the sinking of the Titanic.  Two days after the Titanic sank in 1912, the White Star Line dispatched the first of four Canadian vessels to search for bodies.  Two of these vessels were based in Halifax.

One of these ships recovered 306 bodies from the water.  Some of these were buried at sea, but 209 were brought back and unloaded at the Dockyard at Halifax.

 

Only 59 bodies were shipped out by train to their families.  The remaining victims were buried in three cemeteries in Halifax, Fairlawn, a Jewish cemetery, and a Catholic cemetery.

Most of the gravestones, erected in the fall of 1912, were paid for by the White Star Line and are plain granite blocks.

 

Some are more elaborate, like this one to the “Unknown Child”, and they were paid for by friends, families, or other groups. 

 



 

Cape Breton, Nova Scotia

Even though Sydney is in Nova Scotia, it really identifies itself more with Cape Breton Island, as do most of the people who on this island do.  They are also very proud of their Celtic heritage, as can be seen immediately when you arrive at the port and are greeted by this 55 foot tall fiddle.

During the early 1800’s, the sounds of Celtic fiddling, piping, singing, dancing and storytelling echoed across the Atlantic to Cape Breton.  Because of its relative isolation, the Scottish Gaels in Cape Breton have kept the Celtic traditions alive until this day. 

There is even a college devoted to the study and preservation of the Gaelic language and Celtic arts and culture.  Founded in 1938, St. Ann’s Gaelic College began in a log cabin overlooking St. Ann’s Bay.  The only institution of its kind in North America, It has gained an international reputation. Students of all ages come from around the world to study here.

 

Since I have already travelled around the famous Cabot Trail and explored the well-known Fortress of Louisbourg and other highlights of Cape Breton when I lived in New York, I chose to go to Baddeck, the home of Alexander Graham Bell, to visit the museum there.

 

I never knew how wide a range of interests and how wide a body of inventive work Bell had, much of it undertaken at Baddeck.  By the time he arrived in Baddeck in his late 20‘s, the success of the telephone had freed him from the need to earn a living giving him tine and resources to pursue these interests. 

 

We all know that he had been a teacher of the deaf. His wife, Mabel Bell, had been one of his students.  Scarlet fever at the age of five had left her deaf.  As a wedding present, he gave her all of the stock in what is now ATT. Even though she was wealthy when he met her, this made her even wealthier.

So they were young and rich when they fell in love with Baddeck after a visit here, and they built a huge mansion on the shores of the Bay. It is no longer inhabited and only Bell’s descendants live on this peninsula which is closed to the public.

This statue along the waterfront portrays them looking across the Bay to their home which they called Beinn Bhreagh. 

 

This is the view from their perspective.

Bell’s imagination and wide-ranging curiosity led him into scientific experiments in such areas of sound transmission, medicine, aeronautics, marine engineering and space-frame construction. 

Aeronautical work was a large part of his life at Beinn Bhreagh.  His early kite-flying  experiments of massive kites made up of thousands of tetrahedral cells that could support the weight of a man led to the success of the Silver Dart, an aeroplane that was one of the of the first controlled flight in 1907.

 

His wife played a vital role in her husband’s career, providing him with both financial and moral support to pursue his diverse interests.  She was also an artist.  An example of her art is this owl she gave him symbolizing his “night owl” work habits shown in a replica of one of the rooms he used as an office.

 

 

He also experimented with hydrofoil craft and built the HD-4 which set a world speed record in 1919.   He offered it to the military, but they said they didn’t have any use for it. He did much more that I didn’t realize until visiting this museum.

We made our way back to Sydney  crossing this bridge which spans St. Ann’s Bay where ocean going vessels can come in from the Atlantic and sail to the huge lake of Bras d’Ore.  They pick up gypsum and other natural resources to ship them world-wide.

 

The Bras d’Ores Lakes are a unique combination of ocean and lake features which dominate the center of Cape Breton. From above, the Bras d’Ores Lakes look like a large expanse of smooth water, occasionally broken by islands and sandbars.

 

However, below the smooth surface, the Lakes floor has hills and valleys much like the surrounding country side.
 

As we drove along, we were lucky to see fall foliage in all its glory.

And noted the pine cones high up on the evergreen trees which the guide told us often is a sign of a cold winter coming.

When we got back to the port terminal, clusters of people were busy with their electronic devices because free internet was available.  No wonder, connection on-board (which is slow and inconsistent (latent) can cost as much as 75 cents a minute if you use the “pay as you go plan.”)