Sydney, Nova Scotia, Maritime Provinces, Canada 

We are heading out of Sydney, on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, tonight and heading for an early morning docking in Halifax, capital city of Nova Scotia.  I visited Halifax for a day and a half on my westbound transatlantic cruise last September, but this is a first-time visit for Will.  However, I need to catch up on our days in Montreal, at sea, in Charlottetown, and in Sydney, before I take you to Halifax.

Saturday, 18 May 2013
Montreal, Quebec

We rise to beautiful early morning weather in Montreal, with a view of the Olympic Stadium and the Champlain Bridge outside our windows.  We stop for huge breakfasts—with real Quebecois maple syrup on Will’s pancakes—at a restaurant next store to the Hyatt Regency before heading out to the Place des Artes in the Quartier des Spectacles (downtown Montreal is divided into districts—quartiers—based on the primary activities available in each area) outside the hotel.  This was the scene of a huge street festival last night celebrating “Montreal Day,” but this morning it is quiet and clean, and much like Lincoln Center in New York, with several theatres, the Montreal Opera House, and the Contemporary Art Museum.  Unlike Lincoln Center, Montreal’s cultural scene offers up a variety of architectural styles.

 

Montreal is most noted for its “underground cities,” which connect a number of large shopping plazas with subterranean passageways.  In other words, in the cold of winter and the heat of the brief summer, pedestrians can go many places without stepping into the streets.  These passageways are also connected to the Metro system which fans out into the suburbs.  We walk underground from the Complexe Desjardin underneath the Hyatt all the way south to the convention center and the Old City.  We walk back above ground through Chinatown and the Downtown retail district.  There are two other large underground passages connecting other parts of the city as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bus taking us the 10-minute ride from the hotel to the pier and the ms Maasdam is supposed to leave at 11am (the first bus left at 10:45).  But in the intervening 15 minutes someone somehow loses the bus that is supposed to return to the hotel to pick us up and there is a 90-minute wait for them to find another.  Needless to say, there is a busload of unhappy customers, since the HAL people don’t offer any information.  But after much grumbling and groaning (and getting stuck behind a recalcitrant stopped taxicab at the pier), we arrive at last.  Because we have been upgraded to a Neptune Suite on the Navigation Deck, we get expedited arrival service and don’t have to wait on any lines to check in.  I will report on all the other perks of being in a suite in a later blog.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After lunch on board we have time for a short walk through Old Montreal, which begins just across the street from the pier.  At 5pm, the Maasdam slips from the pier and we sail out into the St Lawrence River, with magnificent views of the city towers behind us and the sites of the Olympics and 1967 World’s Fair (which I attended for three days) to starboard and port sides, respectively.  The river widens as we sail to the northeast and Quebec City, and there is a strange mixture of industrial and agricultural scenes as we pass.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a special champagne reception (again just for passengers in suites) at 7:30pm, so we are happily tipsy (and very tired) as we head toward the dining room for an 8:00 dinner, with a table for two reserved by the windows.  It doesn’t take much to make us fall asleep and we dream about arriving in Quebec City in the morning (which I have already blogged about yesterday).

I will be back tomorrow with further updates and a report on our day at sea and our tour of lighthouses on Prince Edward Island.