Monday, September 26, 2016.
Saint John, New Brunswick. The Bay Of Fundy.
The Eat Club's first Canadian port in our New England-Canada cruise has a geographical uniqueness: the Bay of Fundy, whose tides vary by dozens of feet, and are the most drastic in the world. In a restaurant from which one can see the the effect of those tides, water coming down a river battles it out with the tidal waters, which reverse the river's flow in a whirlpool.
I recommended the place to the Eat Clubbers. When those who took this advice returned, they reported that the restaurant was recently closed for a major renovation, and still is. Fat lot of good I am.
The only time I left the ship today was to get on dry land and make some phone calls. At sea, it's either impossible or expensive to do that, but most of the ports offer essentially free internet service to visitors.
The first call is to Peter Hawkins, the owner of the limousine service that will take us around Nova Scotia tomorrow. He is a very nice man with a deep knowledge of the place. He insists on a $600 deposit. I don't blame him; it's only good business. But, as it is for all our Eat Club events, I don't require a guarantee from the peeps. Which means that I never really know how many will show up, out of a potential fifty-one folks. Or whether we will have enough cars.
Back at home, Mary Ann has made all these arrangements with the Peter. His cars will be waiting for us as we disembark from the ship, and will be marked with "Eat Club" signs. It all sounds fine, but my head is throbbing with the many ways this could be an expensive disaster leaving the Eat Clubbers angry. I can't wait until tomorrow is over.
Meanwhile, the Eat Club continues to have a ball in the afternoons and evenings. We always have a dozen or more people sitting around in the cocktail lounges before dinner at eight. And then we move around in our six designated tables, with good conversations going on and a general feeling of relaxation and fun. The shows in the main theater have been entertaining. I'm not showing up much in the Karaoke club, mainly because among the thousands of songs in the catalog are only a tiny number are in my style. "Nobody's writing music for me anymore, and there's nothing I can do about it," Frank Sinatra once said about this very situation.
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Tuesday, September 27, 2016.
A Big Day In Nova Scotia.
The ship throws its doors open in Halifax, Nova Scotia at a little after nine a.m. I head for the exit shortly thereafter and find, to my great delight, three men holding up signs that say "Tom Fitzmorris Eat Club." At the bottom of the gangplank are six limos. Some thirty of our people are already in cars and ready to head out. We wind up with forty-nine passengers--all but two of our entire group. We have to get one more limo to carry them all. I can feel all my worries evaporate into the overcast atmosphere.
From there on, the tour is a delight, just as it was four years ago when we made these same rounds of the ancestral home of the Cajuns. In our car, Peter gives us a fascinating ride around Halifax, which has more stories to tell than I would have guessed.
We make our way ultimately to Peggy's Cove--a rocky seacoast with such a dramatic look that it's impossible to take a bad photograph of it. (Contemporary Comment: One, can, however, take no picture, which is what my big new smart phone continues to do. It says the photos have been snapped, but how to get them from the camera into a computer continues to puzzle me and everyone else. Some day, in the archival version of these diaries, the pictures will appear. But nothing doing now.)
At Peggy's Cove, the misty, chilly clouds become rainy. We get a chance to see a town full of lobster traps, but after that we're walking in the rain. But we do make a run for Ryn's Lobster Pound." The lobstermen bring their crustaceans here, to be held in a gigantic pool of cold sea water until a 747-size load of lobsters flies off to another exotic restaurant somewhere. Maine/Canadian lobster is the standard of the world.
We are seated at picnic tables covered from the rain. The deal is a pound-and-a-quarter lobster for $19.75. In reality, we get lobsters somewhere between two and three pounds. They're steamed, have their shells cracked, and equipped with cups of melted butter. The lobsters carry maximum loads of fat, and are spectacularly delicious. Even people who say they never eat lobster are knocked out by these. But of course! They're the perfect size, from the best waters, and at the ideal time of the year. Meanwhile, the surroundings could not be less formal.
Two more stops. The first is a store that specializes in maple syrup. Not the kind most of us eat, but the real thing, 100 percent maple, from the most productive place in the world for maple sap. Peter and I engage one another in a debate as to whether the light syrup or the dark is best. I say the light, but a side-by-side tasting is needed. We perform it. The two varieties are tied for first place.
Our tour ends--still in the rain--at a cemetery. There many people who lost their lives in the Titanic sinking are memorialized. Halifax was the nearest port to the famous foundering, and the bodies, effects, or knowledge of the victims were brought here. This may not seem to be the most interesting of attractions--especially not under umbrellas in the rain--but Peter has many stories to share about these people.
All seven carloads of peeps come back to the ship with glowing reports. This has been a tour de force for us. I'm sure nobody on the ship had a more fascinating day than the Eat Club did. I call Mary Ann and thank her profusely for pulling all the details together.
