Gee, I need a vacation from my sea days!

 

 The puzzle from 9:56 pm yesterday….there seems to be a real commitment to this thing!

The one nice thing about sea days, we can sleep in ! Unfortunately,sleeping in means a hurried breakfast because we don’t want to miss anything! Our 9am lecture today was named”Fun with Flags” and if you ever watched The Big Bang Theory  you would be familiar with the concept. Our specialist Todd has joined us in Toronto and so far has proved to be a fabulous lecturer. 

 

After Todd”s lecture, we headed to another part of the ship where I spent an hour with the craft group working on a slow stitching project I brought with me ( I could learn knitting or crocheting here also) and Al attended another lightening talk on some topic that interested him. When I showed up for craft club the crew was having a full blown emergency test..

After seeing the response, I certainly feel safe!

Next up for me was the ships’s book club! Viking has picked 4 books that are relevant to our itinerary for the World cruise. Our group decided to read this one first

I now have homework !

After book club it was time to check in on Al and the Trivia contest.. we have a small but mighty team and from the look on their faces as I approached, things didn’t look good… we cant complain though, our team has won almost every day! We have a friendly rivalry going with a team from Ottawa…they didn’t do well today either!

Lunch is next and it had to be a quick one today…first, walking the buffet line was tough due to the rocking and rolling of the ship…and then secondly we had things to do!!!!

Al headed off to play bridge ( yes he found player he knew from our World Cruise) and I made it to Mahjong 

Im getting a little better, at least I no longer choke and cry after I get my tiles.. If I keep this up I might actually feel good about playing when I get home!

After mahjong it was a rush to get to watercolor class. I need to do a little more work on my painting. You see the waterfall, right?

Al and returned from cards and we are getting ready for dinner in the Italian Restaurant Manfredi’s tonight then out for a concert from a guest artist from Broadway.

This  sea day is exhausting!

Tomorrow we get to go to Immigration in New York and have plans to spend our day enjoying the city

A true crisp fall day to explore Lunenburg,Nova Scotia

Leaving the ship this morning on the tender. I’m often amazed at the beauty of the Polaris and how lucky we are to get to sail on her!Today we are visiting the little town of Lunenburg. It will be our final stop in Nova Scotia. It was started as a fishing town but of course it now is more a tourist destination. The entire downtown area is a UNESCO registered area and therefore the architecture was outstanding!the waterfront is the home to both the Bluenose II ,a replica of the original schooner Bluenose and the Picton Castle, a racing tall ship . ( Im pretty sure we saw the Picton Castle in Hobart, Tasmania on our world cruise!)

a look backwards towards the harbor as we walk uphill to view the houses of the UNESCO sight. Where ever we travel, I find anything that has been designated a UNECSO Heritage site has something of value for me to see. Even in towns that seem just a sleepy fishing village!

Interesting side note: here a name or word beginning with the letter K is pronounced using the ‘K”.  No silent K found! And this company is one of the local fisheries with the best scallops in the world. 

At the waterfront there is also a large black granite memorial to all the ships and sailors from the area who have been lost at sea. It was a very moving monument. The names were alphabetical and many times you can see where an entire family was lost…each of the seaside towns and villages we have visited have their own memorials of some type. The immense loss to these towns can be seen within the names on these columns. It is very sobering to realize the real cost of that piece of fish on my plate.

 At the middle of the hill we see the reason for the UNESCO designation! Every house is brightly painted and a joy to see. The colors are due to the resourcefulness of the residents. These towns were isolated in the beginning and had the “use what you have” mentality. The paints used for their houses was left over boat paint! Brilliant use of leftovers!

  Part of the town square complete with gazebo and war memorial 

City hall ( interesting side note for me..this looks almost like my JR high school)

While walking around looking at homes, we were shown an interesting slice of concrete at the corner of the VFW building. Lunenburg was settled by German settlers. One of the city’s industrialists (they also built ships and iron works) bought this and had it installed here. What is it? Any guesses?? Well, i can now saw Ive touched a piece of the Berlin Wall! It was brought here for a reminder to the local residents of a period of history.. their German history. I certainly didn’t expect to see/touch this!

The Anglican Church. 

Amazing cutout work. All the churches in town are painted white with black trim,no matter what denomination!

Well, isn’t this majestic! It used to be a primary academy but has since become the local library and community meeting place. Inside there is a representative classroom from the heyday of the town however when we got there to tour, the sign was on the door that it was lunch time. So I can’t really tell you what exact time period the class room was from…the building also houses the local theatre group and it sounded like the building was certainly getting second life with the community.

A bright pink house across the street is a familiar in film… not that I could distinctively tell you which films, but I can see it being chosen for locations for sure. I guess there was also a cat who came to live there who has a book! 

Ive looked it up and Amazon has it listed as a reader for 7-9 year olds about a cat who looks out of the potato sack he was stuffed in to see the new place he was at.. it sounds cute and a great way to introduce the town! We didn’t manage to see it in the stores mainly because we didn’t make it to any stores, but it sounded cute!

An example of the older houses. Settlers were given 500 boards and something like a thousand bricks to build their houses.

The RBC was an out of the norm stone building but very impressive.

It takes a secure person to live here! WOW what color!a still functioning Inn

The Fish shack had fabulous fish and chips! Just imagine us sitting up on that balcony enjoying our lunch!

This is half way through lunch. For some reason, i never remember to get the picture first,then eat….there were two giant fish filets and a huge bed of fries ( chips here in CA) and itty bitty coleslaw cup. Maybe it was the sea air, the new friends or maybe the food was actually extra good…whatever it was, this was the best fish and chips in a long time.

We had one last look at the seaside businesses and boarded our tender to head back to the ship…

Today’s progress on the 5000 piece puzzle. Looks like they finally found most of the outside rim….but still boxes of pieces all around!

OMG- the wind can get cold in Canada!

Should have been a clue!

Today we were able to make a port stop in Point Breton ( Louisbourg Fortress)

Its a very small town in the Islands but at one time is was very important to the French. The exporting of the area’s cod provided France with most of its fish for eating. The fortress ( more a fortified settlement than strictly a military defense) was French, then US militia,then given back to France and then back to Britain…. Quite the jumble of owners. It was torn down completely to the ground by the British  and in 197osomething, the Canadian Government decided to restore it exactly as it was in its peak era 1744…its a remarkable renovation of only about 5% of the full size of the area. Its a success story that helped bring the Canadian economy back to life, as out of work coal miners and other workers in the 70s when there was 25%unemployment in the area, were retrained as masons and their job was to restore and rebuild the stone fortress. 

 

 Walking towards the King’s Garisson passing the guard house

One side of the Garrison

The guard house

Inside the garrison. The wall held cannons pointing to the sea. ( the fort was totally unguarded from the back… that proved to be a big mistake.

A corral for the governor’s sheep. The interesting part of this restoration is that the National Park went to Versailles and found over 700 pages of plans, inventories and excellent sources of documentation to help them recreate the 1744 fortress. The Governor’s rooms in the Garrison were furnished with as close to match as could be found. The following are a few pictures of what we saw:

 

 

 This was a cloudy overcast morning and you can see exactly how much light was in each room. I would die here from no sun in the fall and winter!

Inside the garrison was the chapel, the only place women were allowed in. In the out buildings women were fine but not in the Garrison. 

The beauty of this park is the complete reenactment. These people are completely in character and don’t break that much. They are all very well versed in what their character would do and say in 1744-45. Even asking them a modern day ?they will put it into the context of 1745

  

One of the fortress gates 

One of the buildings has been dedicated to showing the First Nation and its presence in early settlement. This young man was a wonderful basket weaver and I enjoyed talking with him about his craft. 

By the middle of the tour the grey skies had decided to break open and start raining on us.. so now we had rain,cold,wind .. it’s amazing how fast my interest in touring is gone when the weather turns..

And here we have the first sighting of penguin grouping behavior ( and we’re not even in Antarctica yet😂)

Waiting for their tender to return to their ship.

Back on board we discover a new puzzle has been started. Seems a worldwide hobby is putting jigsaw puzzles together.. this one is 5000 pieces and was put together by another group of passengers on a Antarctic cruise in February over a 7 day period- looks like the gauntlet has been thrown by our passengers. I walk by the table daily so am taking a pictorial diary of the progress 

With that, I’m heading to a warm shower and a nap.. vacations are hard work.