Category: Charlottetown

Charlottetown cancelled – that makes two sea days

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The itinerary says that we are in Charlottetown today but the weather said no. It was a rough ride from Sydney into the Northumberland Strait. Gail is not pleased with me because I slept like a kitten full of cream while she, apparently, felt every wave and heard every groan the ship made. About an hour before we were scheduled to make port our Captain announced in his Ital-english that we would not be making our call to Charlottetown. For the first 4 hours we made a staggering 4 to 5 knots in the general direction of the Confederation Bridge and just after noon we turned and started for the eastern end of the island, the plan being to sail into the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. I guess the Captain was unwilling to try to stuff our 195 foot high ship under the 200 foot high bridge during a gale. We were within 30 km (20 mi) of the Confederation Bridge before we reversed course. With a little luck, the storm will head east as we sail west and we will be able to make our call up the Saguenay Fjiord. This did, however, make a great day for people watching.

Passengers are as worthy of watching as are crew. I’m guessing the average age of passengers on this ship is in the 60 region. It is rare to see anyone not carrying or using a hand held electronic device, mostly smart phones with tablets in second place. Lap top computers are not as visible today as in days past. Today’s ships offer such good connectivity that internet services are ubiquitous. I find it amusing to walk through lounge areas of the ship watching people with their heads down, focused on smart phones. Many of these same people might very well be critical of kids over using smart phones, however, to be fair, many passengers are reading books on their devices rather than scanning social media or playing games, although that is also quite common. Books in print are still common and there is a library on board. It’s my guess that the library is in demand more for its daily distribution of crossword and sudoku puzzles than for books.

Gail and I and a few passengers regularly spend part of our mornings high up on deck 18 in a large glass lounge at the aft of the ship. They call it Skywalkers lounge and except for a late night DJ there is rarely any event scheduled for this venue. Today it became many passengers favourite place to hang out with books, computers, tablets, smartphones, card games, knitting and other pastimes.

I suppose shipboard activity preferences have changed much more quickly over time than has ship design. The theatre seems to be the area remaining most consistent. Singers or guest musicians, magicians, and Vegas style shows seem to remain popular. Other than that, the entertainment hub is focused on the Piazza, the central architectural feature of the ship. Princess has been trying to make a large lounge, Club Fusion, into a comedy club, with some success. A midships lounge, Explorers Lounge, is now game show and trivia central and it gets good attendance. Some passengers are quite serious about their trivia while others Arrive just in time to hear the answers. Most of the games are designed to embarrass someone. The Wheelhouse lounge is the only place with a wooden dance floor that is actually used, occasionally, for dancing. The only other location regularly featuring danceable music is the ceramic floor of the Piazza. Surprisingly, we did have a good dance set in Club Fusion last evening and it was well attended.

By the end of day tomorrow we will have completed two consecutive sea days with fingers crossed for a final port before our Quebec City arrival.

Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad/Roughing It

I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.”

Charlottetown PEI

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We had another pleasant day for our stop in Charlottetown. Unfortunately, we passed under the Confederation Bridge at night so we couldn’t see it. We did take a short walk along the port area. A vendor was giving away oyster samples and he had plenty of willing samplers. Lobster was available at several restaurants near the port.

There was a large market on the pier and they were doing a brisk business with passengers from the four ships in port. The Zuiderdam and the Emerald shared the dock while two smaller ships tendered. All four ships left the port shortly after 4:30. A couple of the ship’s tours ran a bit late so we had passengers coming to the dining room at 5:00 directly from embarkation.

Over the past two days there has been comedy club running with several standup comics. As usual, some get better audience reaction than others. We saw a couple of them and got a few chuckles. One assistant cruise director probably got the biggest laugh by introducing one comedian as coming from misery rather than Missouri. One would think they’d check things like that but apparently not.

We had an interesting experience visiting one of the many hot tubs. Sitting in the water chatting with another chap and the pump shut down. They are on timers so that was not unusual. The pump would not restart. That was unusual. Even more unusual was the water began to drain. We took that as in invitation to vacate, so we left, since the second tub at that location was covered with netting, the normal way of indicating a closure.

The dining room food on this cruise is stunningly mediocre. It is quite apparent that they are trying to reduce food waste with smaller portions and discouraging over ordering. There are now at least five extra cost food services including a steak house, Italian restaurant, pub style eatery, sea food speciality and bar-b-que specialty. Never-the-less we don’t have to prepare it nor do the clean up. One of the best aspects of the food and beverage services is the number and variety of people we meet. We are also at the point in the cruise where we are beginning to meet the same people for a second or third time simply because we have similar eating schedules. The passenger list is dominated by Americans with Canadians a distant second. We come across Brits, Australians and New Zealanders quite frequently.

Next stop will be Sydney, Nova Scotia.

Paul Theroux, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

The wish to travel seems to me characteristically human: the desire to move, to satisfy your curiosity or ease your fears, to change the circumstances of your life, to be a stranger, to make a friend, to experience an exotic landscape, to risk the unknown.