Tuesday, May 19, 2015
For some reason, I was up early this morning. I don’t know
why. We left Montreal last night on schedule at 1am as far as we know. We were
asleep and didn’t hear a thing, slept right through which is a good thing. We
only had 68 nautical miles to sail down river and you’d have thought we had to
run in reverse to take from 1am to 8am to do that. I can’t explain it. We
seemed to arrive early again but then take a very long time to get docked and
set up. Julie announce the ship cleared at 8:10am. They only have one gangway
again today but we weren’t in a hurry to get ashore, so we didn’t see it
crowded. The Go Next group onboard has their own Oceania excursion groups with their
own Marina Lounge departure point so that can’t be helping anything.
Trois-Rivieres is a misnomer. There are only 2 rivers. The
St. Lawrence or St. Laurent and the Maurice. But there are 2 islands at the
intersection so that when it was mapped they thought it was an intersection of
3 rivers. The name stuck. We learned that the people of Trois-Rivieres are
called Trifluvians which is even funnier than people from Halifax being called
Haligonians.
When we got ashore we found a sign about Marina’s visit and
on the other side was about St. Laurent. That is the ship that we will be
traveling on the Great Lakes in August with Go Next.
We are docked a very long walk down the waterfront from the security
tent and the information tent. We were given maple candies and a free postage
postcard to mail when we got there. There were vendor selling other things like
jams, maple syrup and coffee beans. You have to wonder how much of that kind of
thing they can sell. I mean you don’t need anything to eat on a cruise ship and
it is too heavy and fragile to pack home.
We picked up Trois-Rivieres new season brochure. Evidently
even though we were not in any hurry we must have been some of the first people
off the ship. We were shown how to use the brochure for a self-guided Heritage
walking tour. I asked about some kind of overview tour and she sold us tickets
1 and 2 of the HOHO bus. They were $15pp. It was a pretty awful operation as these things
tend to be. There was one 25-seat city bus with no microphone or sound system
for the guide and visibility was not very good. As well, there was only the one
bus which would make 6 one-hour long circuits with 8 stops. So, while they
called it hop on hop off that was pretty much just in theory, as tends to be
the case with these things. We took the walking tour which was interesting and we
came back and waited where we were told the bus would start running at 10am. As
we sat on the edge of a brick tulip planter, a man approached us speaking French,
Clay said hi to him and he asked if we spoke English. Yes. He told us he was a
reporter and asked if he could interview us and he did. Since we had only been
here an hour, we didn't have much to report. They took our pictures. (This is a French language newspaper. If you right click in the text, you should get an option to translate the page.) That was
new. I think they wound up with 24 people on the bus’ first round so everyone
had a seat and could almost always hear the guide. We decided to stay on for a
full circuit to make sure we’d at least know what there was to see at all the
stops. When we got back to the pier there must have been at least 50 people
waiting for the HOHO bus. Of course, only a fraction of them could get on and it
was standing room only. I guess many of those people had been standing out
there waiting almost the full hour and they were livid when they found they
couldn’t see anything (sitting in the HC seats facing into the bus at the front
which was also filled with standers). Also, when they found out the guide was
speaking next to the driver and no one could hear me because now there were
just too many people all complaining loudly. Clay and I had decided that we
would stay on until the 3rd stop and visit the Borealis, a paper
factory museum. The guide told us each time we stopped there to go in and tell
them we were on the HOHO bus and they would give us a compressed tour to catch the
bus on its next round. A couple got off there on the first stop and were
anxiously waiting for us as we stopped the second time. I don’t know how or if
that worked for them. When we got there to buy tickets, Clay was told that the
next tour was not until 12:20pm (it was 11:15am) but that he could take the self-guided
audiotour instead. We did only to learn midway through that our tour did not
include making your own paper. I pouted and the woman gave me a sheet of
English language instructions for making your own paper. Step one was 1st
you tear your paper into little pieces and soak them in warm water for an hour.
Um… that seems a waste of time. If I have paper to start, why don’t I just
leave it whole and use it? Oh, well. It was interesting. According to the
brochure, I picked up there was supposed to be a price difference between the full,
guided tour and ours, but Clay thought he had paid the higher price. I was in the
bathroom then so I don’t know what he paid and he either didn’t get or didn’t
keep the receipt. Clay refused to try to get back on the HOHO bus. We and
another couple from the ship walked back. It would have been an easy 15-20
minute walk except that there was a huge construction site between here and
there and it was a rutted muddy trail over railroad tracks to find our way
back. At least we didn’t have to face the bus again. It had to be better than
Oceania’ grossly marked up tours. Today they had 5 tours running. The closest
to the Heritage Walking Tour we did from the free brochure was $59pp for 2.5
hours. It took longer because it included the option of a visit to the Old
Prison Museum with the entrance fee not included. We ran into 2 of those tours
as we were doing ours and I honestly did not see $59 of value added.
On a related note was the number of SAQ (state controlled
liquor store) bags we saw coming back to the ship. If Oceania did not so
seriously mark up their wine prices, they might see an uptick in the volume of
sales instead of so severely gouging a willing few. The lucky thing is that so
far Oceania allows guests to bring on alcoholic beverages for consumption in
cabin. The bad news is the number of drinks we see every night leaving cabins
for public spaces around dinner time. It is clear they are drinks they poured
for themselves in their cabins. You know that as the number of people doing
that increase, that it is only a matter of time before O limits or denies
alcohol to be brought aboard.
Which reminds me of seeing the stacks of blue lap blankets
out on the pool deck this morning next to stacks of towels. Yet to get a lap
blanket furnished with your stateroom, you have to go up to Concierge level at
least. That is worth thousands of dollars difference on this cruise and even
though that is a cashmere blanket and not acrylic, who cares because they aren’t
giving it to you!
We came back to the ship and had lunch at Waves outside.
Clay had Kobe beef burger without truffle sauce and we discussed how neither of
us like the taste of Kobe beef so it is wasted on us. I had the Q-ban sandwich
again, but could only eat half of it this time. Clay suggested I order only a
half next time, but we don’t know if that is an option. We headed back out
again since the sun had finally come out and it didn’t look like it might rain
at any second now. Clay was after Molson beer. Since downtown was so close here
we thought we’d find some. We asked the same woman who helped us this morning
and she came up with a convenience store about a block up the hill from her
tent. Clay got Molson plus some.
So, the sun stayed out all afternoon and only the morning was
gray and threatening. We went out early hoping to beat the rain and instead we
beat the sun. Just as well since I didn’t have to wear sunscreen!
Tonight we have nothing planned. The show tonight is Lovena
Fox, a young woman singer who has been on since at least NYC. We won’t go
again. I will assume that we’ll go to Terrace tonight for dinner again since it
seems to be the most versatile and therefore our favorite of the places to eat.
I will go ahead and post this without talking about tonight here. Unless something
extraordinary happens and then I’ll just write about it in the morning.
Oh, I forgot to mention that when we boarded I took
everything out of the fridge that we wouldn’t want. I asked for Caffeine-Free
Diet Cokes and Coke Zero if they had them, otherwise just water. Clay’s CF Diet
Cokes appeared within hours not days and in Montreal the first Coke Zero
appeared. I have so many options for good cappuccinos onboard that I will probably
never need the extra caffeine of a Coke Zero in the cabin. But it was nice to
get it.
Oh, I tried to Google the reporter and newspaper that interviewed
us and I found him and it but there was nothing about him interviewing passengers.
It said that today was the opening of cruise season in Trois-Rivieres and Marina
is the first ship of the season. It also said that the St. Laurent would be
docking late this afternoon. Since we’ll be on there in August, we were hoping
to see it, but it hasn't come yet. It may have been a Google translation
problem since it was in French. We thought if true that it might explain why
Marina docked so far back from the gate area. Well, St. Laurent is just now arriving. Very exciting for the town and for us! I guess we'll go out and have a closer look at it.
