Down the St Lawrence

Mon 26th June 2017...

I did the Beatles music trivia on my own and only got one wrong. Unfortunately, I also marked the score card of a young lady who got them all correct, and without any crossings out or corrections. I was really impressed – she was also on her own and obviously really knew her Beatles, even though she appeared to be only in her early 20’s. The next day, a couple who had been sitting nearby told me that “I should have won”. When I queried them on this they said that they had watched her during the contest and she appeared to not even be listening to the songs, let alone writing answers down. When it was over and while they replayed the clues, she disappeared outside with her cellphone, and returned with a completed score card and handed it in (to me). Their suspicion was that she was using the phone to identify the songs (apparently there is an app called Shazam that will do this) then went outside to write the answers down. She disappeared with her winnings (a Holland America pin and “bragging rights”) and I never saw her again. Although I did every other trivia, I never got close again (lots of American songs and artists again) so I felt quite aggrieved for the rest of the cruise at having been robbed of victory by a cheat!

Well the weather got a little better by the time we reached  Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island (PEI). Carolyn went on  a tour to visit the house that inspired “Anne of Green Gables” – there were lots of look-alikes running around with plaits and period costume and Carolyn finally got a pic taken with a Mountie (albeit a fake one) while I stood next to an Ann clone as we got off the ship.

I had a walk around the town and picked up a chart of the trip so far and a map of Quebec with the St Lawrence on it to keep track of the voyage. It was only on the way back to the ship that I realized we had the iPad with the Navionics chart of USA and Canada that we had got for the Great Loop trip and I could have been tracking the voyage all the way from Boston. They had free wifi in the terminal, so I downloaded the necessary charts to the iPad and could tell where we were going (and at what speed etc) for the rest of the journey.

We were an hour and a half late leaving PEI and we were never told why, but I watched 3 crew members get off, still in overalls but with their luggage, a few minutes before the gangway was pulled and the ship left. I never did find out what they did wrong to get thrown off and hold the departure up for an hour and a half!

The next day was spent cruising the Gulf of St Lawrence in gale force winds, yet again. Carolyn had been up all night with a dose of Delhi Belly which we were obliged to notify the ship’s management – so she finished up confined to the stateroom for 24 hours. We then continued down the river to Quebec City – where it was raining. We had decided to go on a 2 hour “on and off” bus tour in an open top double decker bus so we got saturated and, since I was already developing a cold, it was not fun - which was a shame because Quebec is a pretty city and apparently some of the views can be spectacular on a fine day. However, the number of times the commentary referred to the weather obscuring the views made it apparent that weather like that wasn’t an unusual occurrence in Quebec.

We left Quebec City and cruised to Montreal overnight – which was another shame because the view outside was more like what we expected the trip to be as we got to the narrower parts of the river and it would have been good to see it in daylight. Some of the channels were very narrow and the gaps between us and downbound ships got quite small at times as we passed them. The pilots here earn their keep.

We arrived in Montreal to a warm sunny day and clear skies (at last). First glance out the window told me we were not in the cruise terminal right downtown where we were supposed to be, as there was a large marquee that we disembarked to, on what was obviously a commercial wharf.

We caught a cab to town – it cost $15 just to get off the wharf and back level with the ship, and $40 to get to the hotel. However, it’s a nice hotel in the middle of town, with lots of restaurants, and a short walk to the Central Station where we catch the train on Tuesday. We discovered that the TV in our room got NBC sport and were just in time to catch the last few minutes of Team NZ losing the race to Oracle – and didn’t the US and Aussie commentators crow about the “Comeback” – you’d have thought they had won the regatta!

The following day we booked another “on and off” tour around the city, timed to coincide our return to see the Americas Cup racing.

Much more pleasant

The TV commentators were a bit more subdued when we did Oracle 2 – 0 and were only one win away from taking the cup home. We also managed to find out that the All Blacks beat the Lions, but only by searching the net. Today the plan was to look around the city a bit  more – Carolyn visited a Barbie doll exhibition and went shopping – and then back to the hotel at 1.00pm to watch the (hopefully) last Amcup race. The extra day’s racing must have thrown NBC’s scheduling to bits and at 1.00pm there was a crappy soap opera on and no Amcup. We finally got the great (WINNING) result from Radio NZ on the net, but still haven’t seen any footage yet.

Off  tomorrow on the train to Toronto to pick up Aunty Lyn and go visit the Peterborough locks on the Trent-Severn waterway.