Northern Exposure: Seven-Day Boston-Montreal Cruise Proves a Beautiful, Historic Adventure | Valley News

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Northern Exposure: Seven-Day Boston-Montreal Cruise Proves a Beautiful, Historic Adventure
[b][url=http://www.jacquescartierbest.com]cartier[/url][/b] Holland Americaís Maasdam docks in Quebec City in September, giving cruisers the opportunity to climb around the stone walls of the fortified city and take in views of the Chateau Frontenac and the St. Lawrence River. Illustrates TRAVEL-CANADACRUISE (category t), by Andrea Sachs, (c) The Washington Post. Moved Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013. (MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Andrea Sachs). [b][url=http://www.jacquescartierbest.com]Fake Cartier Mens Watches[/url][/b] [b][url=http://www.jacquescartierbest.com]Cartier Jewlery Replica[/url][/b] The Queen Mary 2 is anchored in foggy Bar Harbor, Maine, in September. Passengers on cruises through Canada and New England might encounter thick fog, strong winds and powerful currents. Thatís all part of the adventure. Illustrates TRAVEL-CANADACRUISE (category t), by Andrea Sachs, (c) The Washington Post. Moved Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013. (MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Andrea Sachs). [b]<a href="http://www.jacquescartierbest.com">replica pasha cartier watches</a>[/b] Bar Island, left, a slip of land in Bar Harbor, Maine, shown in the fog in September, is accessible only at low tide. Passengers on cruises through Canada and New England might encounter thick fog, strong winds and powerful currents. Thatís all part of the adventure. Thatís all part of the adventure. Illustrates TRAVEL-CANADACRUISE (category t), by Andrea Sachs, (c) The Washington Post. Moved Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013. (MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Andrea Sachs).
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[b][url=http://www.jacquescartierbest.com]cartier watches for men replica[/url][/b] The Washington Post
Sunday, October 20, 2013
(Published in print: Sunday, October 20, 2013)
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“Well, now I can cross that off my list.”
Our ship, the Maasdam, was barely 10 minutes out of the gate — the cruise terminal in Montreal — when passenger Leo Croteau shortened his bucket list by one: the St. Lawrence River. Australia, Prague and a Christmas show in Branson, Mo., advanced a line.
No two travelers share the same wanderlust list. For example, none of the six ports of call or two bodies of water on Holland America’s Canada and New England Discovery itinerary originally appeared on my fantasy-trip card. But on a seven-day cruise this month, I considered a revision.
From May through October, when fall’s technicolors peak, the Maasdam hopscotches around the lobster claw of northeastern North America. Starting in Montreal, the ship sails along the St. Lawrence River, glides into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then drops into the Atlantic. In Boston, the final destination, she reverses course. (Passengers can choose either direction or sail the entire 14-day loop.)
En route, the vessel weaves together a macrame of stops: Quebec City; Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island; Sydney and Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Bar Harbor, Maine. The schedule also incorporates a full day on the St. Lawrence, a 576-mile chug that distance-counters will note as the longest leg of the 1,654-mile trip.
“The St. Lawrence is beautiful, and the cruising is intense. The ports are not easy to go into and out of, and the weather is challenging later in the season,” said Arno Jutten, the Maasdam’s Dutch captain. “You don’t book this cruise for the sunshine.”
So why commit to a cruise that’s susceptible to strong winds, powerful currents and thick fog that swallows up the shore? Because of the ports rich in Canadian history and culture. Because of the fiery foliage along New England banks. Because of announcements like this one: “Whales to starboard.” And because adventure should be on everyone’s bucket list.
Until the Holland America sojourn, my cruising CV was a single-space page of southern cruises, specifically in the Caribbean. Not to boast, but I could probably name a ship’s destination based solely on the tours and souvenirs being hawked. Atlantis and conch shells — Nassau. Mayan ruins and margaritas — Cozumel. Dunn’s River Falls and Bob Marley dreadlock hats — Ocho Rios, Jamaica.
The Canadian and New England ports were less self-evident. Sure, I could match the redheaded Anne of Green Gables with PEI and Acadia National Park with Bar Harbor, but the bike trip to Montmorency Falls? Hmm. The puffin nests on Bird Islands? Huh. Lunenburg, which wears the UNESCO World Heritage site badge? I was stumped. (The answers: Quebec, Sydney and Halifax, respectively.)
Other notable differences: On Caribbean cruises, the pools resemble shallow aquariums full of squirming bodies. Chaises are hot commodities. In fact, many passengers remain onboard during port stops to enjoy the extra inch of outdoor deck real estate.
By contrast, on the Maasdam, the lounge chairs surrounding the swimming squares were often empty. When they were occupied, the individuals using them were frequently swaddled in thick blue towels worn as leg warmers and a capelet. Only a few hardy souls took a dip, often bouncing between the pool, the hot tubs and their robes.
At many of the ports, our 1,258-passenger ship was the only cruising vessel, though at 720 feet in length, the Maasdam still dwarfed the dainty settings. Many passengers disembarked early and didn’t return until later in the day. (We typically had seven or eight hours on land.) My windowless inside cabin messed with my circadian rhythm (8 a.m. was as dark as midnight), so I wasn’t one of the first, or even 50th, off the ship. But I tried my best to be the last to return.
In Quebec City, for instance, I spent the first half of the day scrambling around the stone walls of the fortified town and wading through the cheeses, fruit jams and pastel-colored macarons at Marche du Vieux Port, the city’s largest farmers market. With a few hours left on the clock, I ventured over to Saint-Roch, a neighborhood that underwent a Cinderella transformation around the turn of the century.
Saint-Roch Church peers down upon the high-end boutiques (galoshes that slip over high heels!), cafes and home decor emporiums on Rue Saint-Joseph. The landmark building was named for the 14th-century Frenchman who suffered from bubonic plague and was nursed back to health by a dog. I entered the side door expecting to find a sacred setting of stained-glass windows and Saskatchewan marble pocked with fossil imprints. Instead, I discovered a temple of fashion featuring Quebecois designers. To make amends for buying another pair of earrings, I entered the church through the official front portal and vowed to pet the next dog I came across.
When the ship departed at 5 p.m., I joined a thin ribbon of passengers at the railing. As the city dissolved into the distance, many guests retreated inside, tempted by the warmth and the sampling of local specialties on the Lido Deck.
I remained to watch the Maasdam gracefully slide between the buoys paralleling the river banks. In the Caribbean, the water is silent, muted by the immensity of the sea. The St. Lawrence River, however, was full of soft voices. The sounds emanated from storybook homes tucked beneath florets of trees and farms pitched on groomed hills. A light glowed from inside a stone chapel, a reassuring beacon for all who sailed these darkening waters.
The Maasdam was, first and foremost, a mode of transportation. She delivered us to our promised ports. More utilitarian than romantic, I know. However, in between stops, the ship’s crew members would don a toque or a professor’s robe and enrich passengers with lively presentations about the upcoming destination.
This spring, the cruise line unveiled a new program called On Location, which highlights the culture, food, arts and history of the area outside your stateroom window. In Nova Scotia, the staff set up a poutine bar featuring the classic ingredients (fries, gravy, cheese curds) plus some non-traditional toppings (blue-cheese crumbles, curry ketchup sauce, hot dog bites). At the Culinary Arts Center, a demo kitchen, a chef showed guests how to prepare a New England clambake, a Julia Child production that turned into an I Love Lucy episode when the stove misbehaved. And during our at-sea day, from Quebec City to Charlottetown, the cruise director held a lecture called “Oh Canada!” Oh, how little I knew about Canada.
Michael Harvey, a Saskatchewan native, made us all smarter with his talk of the nation. He touched on its history (familiarize yourselves with French explorer Jacques Cartier), nomenclature (“kanata” means “village” in the language of the Huron-Iroquois), currency (the government began phasing out the one-cent coin in February) and flags (the maple leaf design first appeared in 1965). He also threw in some arcane facts that will come in handy if you’re ever at a cocktail party with a Canadian lieutenant governor.
Dare to impress: Canada is a major world exporter of green lentils, with the bulk of those legumes grown in Saskatchewan. Ottawa is home to the world’s largest naturally frozen ice rink, the Ri-deau Canal Skateway, and every year residents of Victoria count the city’s flowers one blossom at a time. And on Flag Day (Feb. 15), throw out this random morsel: A wind test determined the number of points on the flag’s maple leaf; 11 blurred the least on a gusty day.
To further my schooling in Canadiana, I went ashore. In Charlottetown, the provincial capital of PEI, I stepped on the same floorboards as the visionaries of the confederation. In September 1864, delegates from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI and the province of Canada (Ontario and Quebec) convened in Province House to discuss the idea of a union.
“It was really about schmoozing and getting to know each other,” said a Parks Canada ranger. “They wanted to see if they were compatible going forward as a nation.”
On July 1, 1867, the men’s seed of an idea bloomed into a country.
In Halifax, while other passengers boarded pink double-decker buses and horse-drawn trolleys, I hopped into the sidecar of a Russian motorcycle for my instruction.
Vicki Gesner, who runs Bluenose Sidecar Tours with her husband, Kevin Wile, was behind the handlebars. I was the sidekick, a kittenish Darth Vader in a black helmet with a pink camera. Together we rode through the streets of Halifax, Vicki providing running commentary through a microphone.
“When I shut up,” she said as we turned into traffic, “it’s because I’m concentrating on my driving.”
In our motorcycle built for two (or three, if someone sits behind the driver), we zipped around the waterfront and downtown. We started along the Halifax Harbor, where Vicki pointed out the hulking Navy facility, an unbroken link to Halifax’s origins as a garrison city.
“Our whole reason for being here is military,” she said.
To describe the Halifax Explosion of 1917, she pulled off to the side of the road so that I could better visualize the disaster. From our position, the Norwegian vessel would have sat to my left and the explosives-laden French ship would have floated to my right, idling near nets that protected the harbor from sneaky enemy watercraft. The ships collided in the Narrows on a December morning, igniting a blast that destroyed four square miles and killed nearly 2,000 people.
Driving toward the A. Murray MacKay Bridge, I noticed a street sign that read “Africville.” In the 1960s, the city evicted residents of the black community and razed their homes in the name of urban development. In 2011, the Africville Museum opened on the land of the former settlement, but the bruise on the city is slow to heal.
“It was recent history; it happened in my lifetime,” Vicki said as we drove by the replica church that houses the museum. “We never learned about it in school, and we should have.”
We stretched our legs only twice during the 21/2-hour excursion, even though the sidecar had more than enough toe-wiggle room. Pulling up to Fairview Lawn Cemetery, Vicki told me that Titanic victims are buried in three graveyards, one of many shipwreck-related misconceptions she cleared up during the tour.
“Jack Dawson was not a real person,” she said, referring to the Leo DiCaprio character in the Titanic movie and deleting another falsehood. The “J.” on the Dawson gravestone stands for James, a stoker on the doomed ship.
We returned to the terminal at 3 p.m., a half-hour before boarding. Passengers were disembarking from buses.
“Give me a hug and get on the ship,” Vicki said.
I waited for her to drive off, then hooked a left toward the waterfront. I walked along the river until it was really time to go.
Every day, the captain spoke to the passengers. In his announcements, he would blend nautical stats such as our distances and speed with sightseeing tips and weather alerts.
For example, after setting sail from Montreal, he informed us that en route to Quebec City, we would pass under several power lines and bridges, often clearing the structures with only feet to spare. At 11 p.m., he said, we would change pilots, and at 5:45 a.m., the ship would sail under the Quebec Bridge. During the night, we would possibly also experience strong currents.
“We might heel from time to time,” he said, “but it’s completely normal.”
Following the visit to Charlottetown, the captain introduced a new character in the sea drama: Tropical Storm Gabrielle. The storm was about 50 miles south of Bermuda, he noted, and we would “enter the sphere of influence” in a few days. But, he assured us, “it’s no threat to the ship.” The next day, the storm was “still very far away.” On the eve of our Maine arrival, Gabrielle was downgraded to a depression, a mere sneeze.
But the captain wasn’t finished with his weather reports. In Bar Harbor, the land vanished in the morning fog. We were a fat noodle drifting in a bowl of thick gray mist. With low visibility, he halted the tenders to shore. Crew members read off excursion cancellations. Guests groaned and dealt another hand of cards. This could take a while.
While waiting for the town to materialize, I took the opportunity to update my bucket list. Cruising adventure in Canada and New England — complete.
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