Marg & Brian's Iceland to Boston Cruise

Highlights Brian Best Meal: Le Petit Chef. An amazing four course meal that easily exceeded any theme restaurant, I’ve ever visited. Most Scenic: Golden Circle Tour of southwest Iceland with memorable geological locations. Favourite Location: Prinz Christian Sund. Four hours of nature at its most spectacular. Favourite Memory: The life size whale exhibits in the Whales of Iceland museum. Marg Best Meal: Lobster at the captain’s dinner aboard the Eclipse Most Scenic: Iceland with its diverse scenery ranging from mountains and volcanic craters to beautiful ocean inlets Favourite Location: Reykjavik with its many attractions and its beautiful harbour Favourite Memory: Whale watching in Provincetown with the family   By the numbers Appro...

We decided to venture outside of downtown Boston. We travelled across the Charles River north to the town of Cambridge Massachusetts which is the home of Harvard University. As we exited the subway system, we signed up for an escorted tour of the campus by a graduate student. Our guide was a recent graduate master student in education. His area of expertise is how to reduce economic inequities caused by disparity in education. He hopes to complete a research project this year and then return to his home in England and get his doctorate at Oxford. Our tour started with a short history of the university.  Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. By the 19th century, Harvard emerged as the most prominent academic and cultural institution among American elite. Over the 20th century, as its endowment grew and prominent intellectuals and professors bec...

There was one more site on the Freedom Trail that we wanted to visit. Late this morning we visited the Navel Shipyard in Boston Harbour and toured the USS Constitution. USS Constitution, also known as Old Ironsides, is a three-masted wooden-hulled heavy frigate. She is the world's oldest commissioned naval warship still afloat. The Constitution was built in the North End of Boston and was launched in 1797. She was larger and more heavily armed than standard frigates of the period. Her first duties were to provide protection for American merchant shipping during the Quasi-War with France and to defeat the Barbary pirates in the First Barbary War. The Constitution is mostly noted for her actions during the War of 1812 against the United Kingdom, when she captured numerous merchant ships and defeated five British warships. She continued to serve as flagship for the Mediterranean and African fleet. In the 1840s she circled the world. During the American Civil War, she served as a tra...

We decided today that we would take the historical tour of downtown Boston, knew as the Freedom Trail. The Freedom Trail is a four kilometer long path through Boston that passes by sixteen locations mainly dealing with the American revolution. It winds from the Boston Common in downtown Boston, across the Charles River to the Old North Church in the North End and the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. Getting to the Boston Common from our hotel was simple. The subway system is fast and simple to navigate. It may be one of the oldest systems in North America, but it functions smoothly or at least it did today. I had a couple of Bostonians tell me that today was an exception. Our tour guide was a gem. The guides dress up in period customs and take on the personality of a player in the revolution. Our guide was hilarious and very informative. He reminded me of Mel Brooks in his delivery and even his facial expressions. His running joke was that history had it wrong and that he had a...

This will be our last time staying at a Hampton Inn. This hotel Hampton Inn – Logan Airport is beyond pathetic. There has been one problem after another since we arrived yesterday. It started at the check-in desk. I asked where I could park our car while we signed in. She told me that I could park in either parking lot. These lots were gated, and I couldn’t enter either lot. I was able to find a spot in a No Parking zone, A minor complaint but it was a harbinger of things to come. When I returned the rental car to the airport, I was told to go to specific gate and the shuttle bus would pick me up. What she didn’t tell me and another gentleman who was also waiting for the bus was that we needed to call the front desk and ask for the shuttle. Because it runs every 30 minutes we assumed it was automatic. We were stuck at the airport for over an hour. The hotel was supposed to have a restaurant. What we got was a bar that serves snacks and quick bar food. The hot tub was broken. ...

Today we started the final leg of our vacation. We are moving from Cape Cod to Boston. We’ll be in Boston until Thursday. Along the route to Boston, we passed through the historic town of Plymouth Massachusetts. Plymouth is a beautiful coastal town south of Boston. As you would expect, on a holiday weekend the town was jammed packed full of tourists. It took me about 20 minutes to find a parking spot. Plymouth is the site of the first Pilgrim settlement, founded in 1620. Plymouth Rock, a boulder in Pilgrim Memorial State Park, marks the place where settlers are thought to have first landed on shore. It might be one the most photographed single rocks in the world The Mayflower II, a full-scale replica of the ship that carried the Pilgrims across the Atlantic, is the main attraction in this waterfront park. The information displays told the stories of the 102 immigrants from the UK and Holland that travelled for months aboard a stinking vessel, sharing space with farm animals in extr...

Our last full day on Cape Cod was spent in the tiny town of Chatham. It is a quaint little town filled with speciality shops. The reason I like it is because of its unique Cape Cod architecture. The area was first visited by Europeans in the early 1600s. Samuel de Champlain established a camp here but within a very short period of time a battle erupted between the French and the native Indians. After suffering some casualties, the French left and continued their explorations, travelling down the St. Lawerence and Ottawa rivers. In the 1700s the English established an illegal village on the current site. To be incorporated they needed a reverend and a working tavern. After a period, they found a cleric and built a tavern to become the village of Chatham. Chatham has undergone a transformation from a farming village to a fishing village and is now reliant on the tourist trade. Tonight was the last night the entire family will be together on this trip. Ken and his family left after dinn...

Hyannis is known for the late President Kennedy’s family compound. There is a museum dedicated to the tragic family history of the Kennedys. The main street is a busy commercial area with many interesting shops and restaurants, with traffic jams to match.  Our annual family scavenger hunt was held today. Several years ago, Marg’s daughter Kari started this tradition by making a list of clues for which we had to travel into town and answer the questions. This year’s location is on Main Street in Hyannis Massachusetts. The local residents must have thought the seven levels of hell had descended on them. We ran thru the downtown, harassing the locals and merchants for answers to Kari’s questions. We were snapping pictures and videos to prove we had been to the locations that the clues pointed to. To a stranger it must have seemed to be total chaos. When we gathered to determined the final score, pedestrians must have thought a massive fight had erupted. Good natured accusations of...

  In 2015, we had a family vacation on Cape Cod. One day we went to Provincetown and went whale watching on the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. The grandchildren had a great experience seeing the humpback, minke and right whales. They talked about it for a long time, and we told them that we would return some day. Well, that day has arrived.   This afternoon we took the hour drive to Provincetown and boarded a whale watching excursion running out of Provincetown harbour. After about an hour into the ride we were in the middle of the feeding ground for the humpbacks. I found out that my photographic skills are no match for these whales. By the time I got the whale in the view finder and had it properly focused, they were gone. After a while I just gave up and enjoyed the show. They put on an amazing display of synchronized swimming and diving. It seemed like a pod of three whales would appear every couple of minutes. Some were at a distance, but many of the breac...

Early this morning we pulled in Boston to conclude the cruise portion of our vacation. We were awakened by the screaming of passenger jets flying just over our heads. The cruise port is just south east of Logan airport and as we approached the pier, we were in direct line with the runway. I want to take this opportunity to give a shoutout to our sommeliers. Mark in the lounge called the Cellar Masters and Richard in the dinning room were among the best we’ve ever encountered on our cruises. The disembarkation process could not have been more chaotic. I’m not sure who to blame but it was the worst experience that we’ve had on our any of our cruises. It started with clearing USA Customs and Border Protection.   Celebrity tried a new process to go through customs and leave the ship. We were supposed to leave the ship at 9:00am, but the process proceeded at a snail’s pace, and we did not leave the ship until after 10:30am. Celebrity blamed CBP for the slowdown because they did not ...

This morning, we sailed into the port of Halifax. The skyline has changed quite a bit since last time we were here in 2010. The skyline is now filled with harbour front condominiums and tall office towers in the downtown. Gone are the historical old warehouses that lined the shore of the harbor. Some in our cruise crew took a tour of historical Halifax where they saw the Titanic cemetery, the Citadel and the neighborhood which was decimated by the explosion of an ammunition boat during the First World War. Others took a tour out to the very scenic Peggy's Cove which they loved. Because we have been to Halifax many times, we arranged to meet some friends with whom we played baseball in Ottawa.   They moved back to Nova Scotia to raise their families and to be with their friends. It must be at least 20 years since we've seen Alex and Mu, and 14 years since we've seen Moose and Karen. We meet for lunch at a pub called Dirty Nelly’s. It was a great occasion as the conversatio...

The weather has improved considerably. It is sunny and warm enough to enjoy the pool deck. On Saturday night as we headed off to a lounge for a pre-dinner drink, I looked out to the west and saw land. We were a few miles out from St. John’s Newfoundland. It felt great to be back in Canadian waters. Our cell phone service even worked, for a few minutes at least. We’ve been introduced to two new people on the cruise crew, Dan and Lorraine, who live in the St. John’s suburbs. Two nicer people you could not meet. I love Lorraine’s accent. She reminds me of Mary Walsh from CBC’s “This Hour Has 22 Mintues.” Before dinner went to see the musical group Vox Fortuna. These three tenors again put on a fantastic show. Their amazing voices just filled the theatre with pure music. Our dinner was great. It is a theme restaurant call “Le Petit Chef.”  There was a four-course meal, and the unique feature is that you were treated to a three dimensional automation between each course that was d...

 After exiting the Prinz Christian Sund, we travelled west along the coast of the north Atlantic Ocean. There was very thick fog, high winds and driving rain. The periodic blasting of the ship’s fog horn reminded us that the ocean can be dangerous. In the morning when we arrived in Qaqortoq harbour, the fog was still very thick. You couldn’t see the shoreline, which was at most 500m away. Fortunately for us, the sun came out and burned off the fog leaving us with a beautiful sunny day. Because the harbour is too shallow for a cruise liner, we had to tender into the town. What a disaster. No one was sure of the process and where they were supposed to assemble to board the tender. The lady in charge of assembling passengers to board the tenders seemed to be clueless and was obviously frustrated. Passengers trying to get to their excursions in the town were getting angry as they received little guidance, and the start time of their tour was approaching. It was not a good way to star...