Halifax and Table Talk...

Halifax: Not your usual tourist destination of choice, unless you like to visit places that are full of history, although not what some would say is glamorous and significant history. As a Canadian I find it fascinating. This is the far east side of Canada with the Atlantic crashing in on it for centuries. It is also in the general area of where the first Europeans came to North America. [1604 I believe]. They happened to be from France and were known as Acadians. It was only a few years ago that we found out that my grandfather was an Acadian, so this is a significant place in our family background.



We have been in a fog bank since leaving New York and that was the situation until we were within 100 meters of the dock. It started to burn off and we actually saw something other than white for the first time. The day got better as the hours passed. Funny, I miss the foghorn!

Interestingly, we changed captains this morning, our Italian captain is off for two months leave, and we have a British captain between here and Dover. On the morning chat from the departing captain, he commented on what he called 'blind pilotage' coming into port. I can only assume that means that he was entirely dependant upon instruments to make his way through Halifax harbour. Hmmm. He also mentioned in the same talk about being in 'Northern Latitudes'. Not the kind of commentary we expected on board a ship called the 'Tahitian Princess'. Particularly when we later visited the Titanic Exhibit and relived the Halifax Explosion of 1917 when a fully loaded munitions ship collided with another ship in the harbour, resulting in what is still the world's largest man-made accidental explosion. I suppose that packing our bathing suits expressed our naivety about this cruise. No fear, all is well.

Great time in Halifax, a very friendly and easy-to-get-around city. Certainly a nautical city, much more than Vancouver. The waterfront area is beautifully restored and a board walk stretches the whole length. There is also a bus called FRED that is a neat feature. FRED means Free Ride Everywhere Downtown. Downtown is a misnomer, it gets you anywhere that is of interest to a day tourist. We did the walk, went to the Victorian Gardens,


were at the Citadel for the 12 noon gun,


then to the Maritime Museum,


and then to Alexander Keith's Brewery for a late lunch. Did you know that Halifax is where Cunard got its start?


We did some window shopping, picked up a couple of bottles of wine and back on board. Nice sailaway to some pipe and drum music and then out into the Atlantic by 5.00 PM. A point of interest from Ian was that the seas are usually calm in fog. The lesser of two evils I suppose.

We had a longer than usual dinner tonight. Our mysterious missing couple have never turned up so we are a table of six. The conversation seemed to go on forever and the laughter became contagious. We have only been the last out of the dining room a couple of times in our life. it is usually a sign of a happy table. Some of us ran for the 10.15 show, one went to the cabin to write the blog.

Wonderful day today. Tomorrow we have a day at sea as we nip around the left side of Newfoundland, heading up north to the tip of that province. The next six ports are by tender, [lifeboats], that is if we are able to get into them, the previous cruise was unable to get ashore in Greenland because of ice.

We also had a flurry of emails to and from our designer for our new home. What did we do before emails and instant communications?