Back home from Chicago

Monday, August 10, 2015

We were awakened by the docking maneuvers a little before 3am. We were docked at the Iroquois Landing of the Illinois International Port. It was not meant for cruise ships! It was better than tendering though. So while we were disappointed to miss arriving at Navy Pier, this had to be better. It was at 95th Street so far southeast as to almost not be in Chicago. O'Hare is on the northwest side of Chicago. It made for an over an hour commute. Since our documents had a scheduled 2 hour drive, we felt lucky that it was only 70 - 75 minutes! At $45 pp, they did not even stop at each needed terminal but dropped us in front of the airport Hilton. Honestly, we had expected for the $90 we paid that we'd at least be getting door to door service. We saw Terminal 3 signs as the American one when we drove past and just walked back after getting our bags from under the bus. I have no idea what the elderly, disabled and heavy packers did from there.

It was actually kind of a calm disembarkation morning because you didn't have to be out of your cabins until you were called to disembark. That made all the difference. We enjoyed a last breakfast with Edgar. I had the chef's special vanilla French Toast since I had missed my special Sunday breakfast. I cannot recommend the French toast! They weren't prepared to put maple syrup on it either, Edgar had to put on a full on scavenger hunt to find one dispenser. They act like maple syrup is gold on Saint Laurent, just so you know. The other final misstep was one of those information sharing problems. They had delivered at least 2 and maybe 3 invoice summaries to our cabin. Now, we had all been required to provide a credit card that they scanned with their computers when we checked in and before we got our keycards. We were told then that unless we made other arrangements this is how we were paying for our onboard bill. We agreed and used a Discover Card which we had used to pay for the cruise. None of the invoices they provided had any notes that we needed to come to Reception or speak to the Purser or to provide payment. They said if we wanted to leave in place the payment methods we had previously provided to do nothing. So we did. At 6:30am we could start picking up our passports. We heard some rumbles while in the dining room about people not being able to get their passports because they hadn't paid their bills. They were mystified but were planning to return after breakfast when the line had gone down. We went up right after breakfast and got in a short line. More than half the people in front of us were having to pay bills and everyone argued they had already provided a credit card. Of course they did and to the same women we were facing now! When we got up we drew a different woman than the one we drew 10 days ago. She said we had provided a Discover but they only accepted MasterCard, Visa and Amex. Clay wanted to argue with her that we knew Haimark takes Discover because we'd been using it to make payments. I stopped him and pointed out that would be pointless, even though they said they accepted Discover 10 days ago when they took it, today they say they don't so they won't. Give her a different card and let's move on. Just a head's up for those who may follow. She charged the Visa and returned our passports. I don't know why when Ken was making all his jokes about people having to stay and work off their bills, he didn't just tell us all to go check with Reception about the status of our invoices. That would have avoided some unnecessary departure morning stress for everyone. Of course, the people doing the invoicing should have printed the same message on all those papers they were delivering.

We got in and got our boarding passes from a kiosk with no wait. We both had TSA pre-check so we only had about 5 people in front of us. Unfortunately, something was wrong with 3 of those people and they weren't following instructions and brought the whole operation to a complete standstill. Then when I walked through the metal detector I either set it off or else it beeped as I was a random selection for a body scan and pat down. It was all still over relatively quickly.

We saw bagels and bought our lunch for the airplane. Then we found our gate K3 and settled in for a wait. There was no plane there when we got there. It arrived at around 11 and we started boarding around 11:25am. We took off 8 minutes early. The flight only lasted about an hour and it was smooth. We ate our bagels with our complimentary Cokes. There was a time change and in about an hour we were on the ground in Raleigh. We caught a shuttle bus to the parking lot shortly after arriving. We found the car easily and it started right up and we had an easy drive home. It was only about 80F and very low humidity. The grass doesn't even need cutting, though the cars need a wash. All in all, it's like we never left!

Still it is good to be home. It will be good to be here for a few weeks and I expect it will be harder to pack up and head back for Europe the next time.

It was a good cruise with Haimark's Saint Laurent and we can recommend it.

Cruising Lake Michigan to Chicago, IL

Sunday, August 9, 2015

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We moved the clocks back an hour last night as we crossed time zones. That meant an extra hour of sleep this weekend and I think we could all use it. Clay was up first. When we got to the dining room, it was much more populated than it was yesterday morning even though people had nowhere to go today. I was hoping for a special Sunday breakfast this morning. Unfortunately for me the chef’s special was crepes filled with cottage cheese. I can’t abide cottage cheese! It was another ham and cheese omelet for me. It had orange and white cheese today so that was my Sunday special. Clay ate from the buffet and got a banana and a chocolate chip muffin so that was his Sunday special.

The first lecture by Fred Stonehouse was from 9:30 to 10:30am and was the Saint Lawrence: Saltwater to Seaway. It was about the history, present and future of the seaway and its craft and cargo. Next up is an hourlong disembarkation talk by Ken (scary!), lunch, afternoon lecture on the Great Lakes and college team trivia at 3:30 to 4pm. The Captain’s Farewell Reception is from 6 to 6:30pm. Dinner is 6:30pm.

We don’t have Internet today which is unfortunate since we’d like to do online checkin about now. I guess I’ll see if Clay can do it through his phone. We’ll have to wait to get boarding passes when we get to ORD anyway since there is no print center onboard.

Well, I guess Ken was being overly generous when he scheduled his disembarkation talk for one hour as it only lasted 20 minutes. In other news, we still have no Internet and Clay has no cell signal either. I guess we can check in when we get to ORD.

Good news is that we got checked in online at last and both got TSA pre-check. Now we just have to get our boarding passes at the airport since we can’t print onboard. We had hoped since we have only carry ons that we could go straight to security but now we’ll have to find a desk or kiosk to print boarding passes. Oh well. That reminds me that there seemed to be a high percentage of passengers onboard Saint Laurent that did not get their luggage in Montreal. They were coming from all over America and just didn’t get their checked bags. The really bad news is that they didn’t get their bags delivered to the Saint Laurent until Sault Ste. Marie.

Back from lunch. I had lemon pepper roasted free range chicken and it was a huge serving. Clay ate the leg. Clay had the tandoori chicken Caesar salad. We both had Sacher torte for dessert.

We went to Fred Stonehouse’s Great Lakes lecture. It was interesting. The Great Lakes contain 21% of all the earth’s fresh water! We left before trivia started. The grand prize for the winning team was going to be lanyards. Not enough to tempt us into it!

Oh, the sailing today! I have been conspicuously silent on the subject and that falls under no news is good news. When we woke up this morning, the water was so calm it was almost glassy. We could see land on the horizon to the port and to starboard. We walked out on to the outside deck between our cabin and the dining room on the way to breakfast in disbelief and amazement. It was just little splashy water noises. During the day it has gotten hazy as we have left all visible land behind and the water has just been rippled but still smooth. It would have been a perfect sailing day except for the fact that Saint Laurent is leaning, tilted to the starboard side about 8 degrees. Clay agrees with me for once and is not accusing me of exaggerating. He says it is clearly tilted and a ball would roll across the deck if you put one down on it. We sat for a while at the aft of the 5^th deck and you could turn your head and see the horizon on one side a foot from the top rail and on the other side even with the rail. I had pointed it out this morning in the dining room, but he didn’t recognize it ‘til then. He keeps saying that if he were the Captain, he’d be leveling the ship out. I have a theory. I’d level it out too if I could but I think something happened and he can’t. The day we were in Sault Ste. Marie, John’s Septic Service (I am not making this up!) ran trucks back and forth all afternoon and into evening pumping our sewage out. No problem. It is hard to believe we could wait that long! Yesterday in Mackinac, we had blue hoses running all day filling our potable water tanks. Somehow, I think the imbalance was created and they can’t sail us level now. Without the tilt, it would have been a fantastic sailing day. I’ll take the tilt over big waves anyday!

We went to the Captain’s Farewell reception this evening. We went early to make sure we’d get seats because we wanted to finally see our Captain. We’ve been on 9 days and now we’ve seen him and we still don’t know his name or where he’s from. People were so noisy that we didn’t hear his name when Ken announced him. He came up and said he’d like to see us all onboard again and sorry he was saying hello and farewell at the same time but that he’d spent more time on the bridge than in his bed during this cruise. Then he left. We didn’t hear enough of his speech to even guess where he might be from, but my guess is Italian from what little I heard. That was weird. We went down to dinner a couple of minutes early. There were already passengers seated in the dining room. I walked around the corner and found all the tables in our little corner had reserved signs on them. I stopped and told Clay and Brnka and Edgar heard me and both hastened over to find us another 2-top in Edgar’s area. It was a different shape and right at the back of the room against the window and it rattled and shook and it was quite a bit noisier which was surprising.  Clay was sitting facing downhill and had to brace himself to keep from falling face first onto the table. I had to lean forward. It was not a good final dinner. We both had the chef’s special of filet mignon and shrimp. Clay ate my shrimp. Clay had a salad to start and peach melba for dessert. I had tomato consommé to start and vanilla ice cream with honey for dessert.

Tomorrow we are expected to arrive in Chicago between 3 and 5am. We have to have luggage out by 6am. Pick up passports after 6:30am. Breakfast is at 6am. We have to disembark by 8am. We booked $45pp transfers to ORD since there will be no taxis at International Port (construction moved us from our scheduled dock at Navy Pier). We should be home by dinner time tomorrow. We’ll be home for about a month!

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Mackinac Island, MI

Saturday, August 8, 2015

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Clay was up first this morning. It was still dark but we were sailing very slowly alongside Mackinac Island. We saw the big Mackinac Bridge come into view just as the sun was rising. It was overcast with low dark clouds and not much of a sunrise plus it looked like an ominous sign for a bad weather day. I had a hard time getting going even though today’s visit to Mackinac was the big attraction in booking this trip for me.  We went to breakfast and I clearly wasn’t the only one feeling like a late start. We had a whole half of the dining room to ourselves. It being the weekend, I was hoping to treat myself to a special breakfast. Alas, the chef’s special was burrito omelet and I was not up to taking that risk! I had oatmeal and yogurt from the buffet. Clay had his usual fried eggs, meat, potatoes and bread and cheese. Edgar told us he hoped to go ashore finally today. He and Servy seemed like friends today and Servy even came over and offered to top off my coffee. I guess the good mood was contagious among the dining room staff. I really do hope that they finally got a chance to go ashore.

We were docked by 8am. We started debarking for our excursions at 9am. Clay and I got called closer to 9:30am. That is fine. All those earlier people were paying an extra $48 each for the buffet lunch at the Grand Hotel. So, we went out onto the Arnold Transit Dock and walked up to Main Street where they had 20-passenger horse drawn carriages for us. We rode around the town area of the island’s south end for about an hour. This ride eventually took us to Surrey Hill Carriage Museum. There were some old carriages in there, but mostly it was a comfort stop with shopping. We looked around and used the restrooms. I found and bought a patch and then we heard the loudspeaker announcement for Saint Laurent passengers to go to the 30+ passenger carts. The 20 passenger carts had 2 big draft horses. The larger carts had 3 big draft horses pulling. Each cart’s driver had a microphone and speakers in his cart so he could give a narrated tour. These consisted largely of awful jokes and puns with a smattering of historical information thrown in. It was good, but I might have been upset if I had actually paid for it. I mean, make no mistake, we paid for it. But, it was included in our fare and I didn’t make the decision to give them my money. They did give us each a souvenir pin as our ticket/pass ‘til 2:30pm so that was nice. Anyway, since the groups were getting scrambled by the carriage number change, it didn’t matter how early or late you left here unless you stayed too long that is!  The next stop was about a half hour ride through the State Park which was once the nation’s 2^nd national park behind Yellowstone. This ride took us past the cemeteries and for a photo stop at Arch Rock before dropping us at Fort Mackinac. It dates from 1780 and was instrumental in the War of 1812-1815. They’re celebrating their bicentennial. We were first told that we had an hour here and we could have used it, but then they said that we only had carts available to get us to the Grand Hotel until 11:45am. We left about 10 minutes early after the 11:30am cannon firing. We got to go into the Grand Hotel and tour the gardens and public spaces. We went in the shops and lobbies. We shared a sundae at Sadie’s Ice Cream Parlor and rocked in the big porch’s rockers. Then we caught another horse drawn taxi back to the dock where we returned to the cabin and changed into shorts and had lunch. The day had faired off and the sun was brilliantly bright in a cloudless sky. We think it got warmer than the 72F predicted. 

Clay got his salad at lunch. It was calamari Caesar salad with anchovies. He liked it. I had a deconstructed beef & Guinness pie. It had a pile of mashed potatoes, a pile of beef and gravy and a round of puff crust. I liked it. For dessert, Clay had carrot cake and I had little strawberry eclairs with white chocolate sauce. There were crazy crowds out on Main St. with people lined up outside restaurants to go a seat, so we made the right choice. 

I had been looking for a cotton long-sleeved shirt since we started this cruise and without finding one yet I had figured this was my best chance at it. But, I had no idea! We had made landfall in t-shirt heaven, or hell. We looked in every shop before I made my choice. It was a plain dark blue shirt with a small map of the Great Lakes and the words along with Unsalted. I like it. I will have to hem it as I have all the similar shirts and then roll up the sleeves. But, I didn’t really like any of the ladies’ shirts I saw that could have gone unmodified. Clay bought a t-shirt at Doud’s Market, the oldest grocery store in America. We went for the world’s largest and absolutely worst shaved ices after to celebrate and mostly just threw them away. They were a waste of sugar and ice. We used them as an opportunity to sit on benches in the sun on the dock for a while though. We went back to the ship. We had time to wash up and get a couple of Coke Zeros before the afternoon lecture. Today we had a guest lecturer. We had Bill Taggart, the Grand Hotel’s historian. He was good and entertaining. We sailed right on schedule at 5pm. I thought we were going to sail west under the Mackinac Bridge to get to Lake Michigan and I was right. So we went up to deck 4 and then aft on deck 5 to see the bridge as we sailed under. That was probably the end of scenic cruising until we approach Chicago. Of course, we’ll be doing that in the pre-dawn darkness so even if it were scenic we aren’t likely to see it. I think we are supposed to be docked about 6am on Monday in Chicago and off by 8am so we won’t see much. We knew that though and decided it would be okay since we’ve been before. I was born there! 

Dinner was good. Edgar told us he had seen us in a t-shirt shop! He said he got to go ashore for 30 minutes and he had gotten a souvenir magnet. He seemed happy enough with that. Clay had salad and swordfish and strawberry ice cream with chocolate sauce. I had hummus and fettucine primavera and the same dessert. 

Entertainment tonight is the onboard musical duo performing Karen Carpenter. We will definitely pass on that and unless we find something in the limited TV line up go to bed early. We sail all night, all day tomorrow and all night again to arrive in Chicago on Monday morning and fly home. Fingers crossed for smooth water on Lake Michigan for 2 days!

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Sault Ste. Marie, MI

Friday, August 7, 2015

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Thankfully last night by dinner time the stabilizers had been deployed and also the waves had calmed, so it wasn’t too bad in the dining room.  I still have no idea what happened in the lounge last night. Usually there is a live camera feed with sound from there on one of our TV channels. It is right alongside the most ridiculous bow cam feed ever. But, last night there was no broadcast on that channel. I am assuming that the duo SoulJourn that has been playing every night was playing last night. The only other thing of note was that we stayed dressed and up until after 9pm waiting for delivery of today’s program, when it didn’t arrive we went to shower and to bed with the privacy sign out. Clay was in the shower and I had put in my eye gel and gone to sleep when I was awoken by knocking. I finally answered it and they delivered the program, 4 red luggage tags and our disembarkation instructions. Our luggage needs to be outside by 6am with the red tags on it. (They are Saint Laurent red plastic disks, so souvenir luggage ID tags. Nice.) Breakfast is 6:30 to 8:30am. We have to leave on our bus to O’Hare at 8am. Estimated time of arrival at O’Hare is 8am. Our flight is at 11:55am, so we should be good.

This morning we were awakened at 5am by the side thrusters. After all Ken’s hedging about the Soo Locks and Lake Superior, we had arrived. I was slow stirring even though I peeked out and knew we were entering a lock in the dark. We rose 36 feet according to the water gauge I saw. (21 feet according to Ken at the port talk.) We sailed on into Lake Superior as far as Ile Parisienne. There alongside it, we made a big loop and turned around and headed back. Ken came on the intercom about 8am to announce that we are in Lake Superior next to Ile Parisienne and headed back to the St. Mary’s River and the Soo Locks. He said we would expect to lock back through about 10:45am to 11am to be docked alongside Sault Ste. Marie around 11:30am.

As to breakfast, it looks like we ran out of bananas just as Clay decided he wanted one today. I expect they won’t re-provision until Chicago so he should have thought of that earlier. Servy and Edgar seem to have made up. I don’t know what was going on and I don’t need to but they were chatting courteously this morning and Edgar seemed happier. So good news. Clay commented to Edgar that he had a rough night at dinner last night and he did. His section was filled and with demanding and even ridiculous people. Edgar rolled his eyes and said the worst was when one of the people asked him for lobster. He said he can’t just say no so he said he’d go ask chef. He came back to tell her that the chef said no lobster on this sailing. We missed all that and I am glad I wasn’t there to see the passenger’s reaction. I don’t care as I wouldn’t eat lobster anyway, but I have to agree with the passenger that at this price point it is expected at least once.

Our port talk for today’s stop in Sault Ste. Marie is at 9am. We will also learn about the US Customs clearance of the ship back to the US there. We will go ashore for our excursion here at 1pm. At 6 to 6:30pm, we have the Mackinac Island port talk. 6:30 is dinner. 7:30pm is sailing away. 8:30pm is the lounge showing of the movie “Somewhere in Time”. Clay claims he has never seen this film. It is a classic romance film so I don’t know how he has missed it. I suspect he’s actually seen it and just didn’t know the name. We’ll see and be looking for footage of Mackinac Island since it was filmed there.

Back from the morning port talk. Ken had us pick up AudioVoxes again. We’ll see if we actually use them today. Ken says we will be split into our normal color buses and will go to one of 3 places in a rotating order. At some point we will all visit the viewing platform of Soo Locks and hopefully watch a ship lock through, then to Museum Ship Valley Camp and a city tour. We won’t find out our tour order until we board our bus. Customs clearance will be by deck order sometime after we have docked and the personnel come aboard. It will happen in the lounge. We will be called by decks 4, 3, 2 and finally 1. They will hand us our passport when we enter the lounge and take it back when we have finished our interview and exit the lounge. Ken says he expects everyone to be through the process within 30 minutes of beginning.

There is a woman named Emmy on a Cruise Critic board thread about this ship and cruise line that lives in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario. She has posted that she will come to the lock to see us go through and has said she will wear a pink boa! This will be fun!

Back from lunch. They have just called deck 4 to go clear USCBP. We are about an hour behind schedule now and they say they will adjust the afternoon hours accordingly. We’ll see. Anyway, I did spot Emmy with her pink boa. I was harder to find for sure, but when I finally moved from the front to the front starboard side off by myself and waved, she responded so I count that as we connected. It was fun! I laughed out loud when she got her boa back out after I started waving from the side. Clay got some photos of Emmy in her pink boa I’m sure.

We had burgers for lunch since the chef’s special today was Great Lakes Fisherman’s Pie. Edgar said the chef had a backlog for burgers when we had to wait. We said we’d just wait! Clay had ice cream for dessert and I can’t remember what I had.

We were delayed going ashore as it took us over an hour to get docked at Alford Waterside Park and get the gangway in place and load the CBP agents to come aboard and clear the ship. Our lecturer, Fred Stonehouse, explained to someone the other day that it can be called a boat because all the ships on the Great Lakes can be called boats because ships are saltwater vessels. I’m not sure it works that way because Saint Laurent is doing Cuba cruises come winter so by his definition then it is a ship. I have been calling it both, I mean the same thing, a floating vessel. Our group, blue, was the last to be called. We drove directly to the Museum Ship Valley Camp. It would have been interesting but we had a young man guiding us for our 1 hour there and he was barely audible and then he was reading from index cards. It didn’t heighten interest. He did not get to complete his tour. I am not sure what happened there but I told him when he had 20 minutes left that our bus was on its way and it would leave in 20 minutes. He asked me what time it was and what time we were leaving so I am sure he understood me, but he didn’t alter his course. He just carried on until a loudspeaker announcement for us to exit the ship, then he turned and walked us out to the exit sign. Next we spent about an hour driving around Sault Ste. Marie, MI on a city tour. It was less interesting with no photo stops. Finally we arrived at the Soo Locks St. Marys Falls Park. The guide told us we had to be back on the bus here in 1 hour and there was pandemonium. Half the bus revolted and insisted on being returned to the ship within 30 minutes or immediately. I think he had planned to give us a guided tour here too, but he sent the bus back with about half the people. Those who wanted to stay got off the bus and he told us to go on in. We did but then he didn’t come. So, we headed for the Visitor’s Center and used the restrooms. Since we didn’t finish the museum ship and get to go out to the gift shop/restroom building it was our first chance. When we came out, he was looking for people but when we joined him he left. We went back in to the information desk and found that the next boat through the lock would be at 5:15pm and that was when we had to meet the bus again. So, we didn’t get to see a ship lock through. There was a theater in the visitor’s center and we thought there might be something there but the guide said no it was only for special events. So, we left and walked Water St. Clay got a t-shirt and we bought some caramel corn.

Ken was on our bus and told the guide and bus driver that the next cruise is all Japanese and the one after it is all French. He told us the day we boarded that the previous cruise was all French. As Clay said how come we don’t hear about this cruise line when they must be doing some heavy international marketing. Right? We got back in time to go to Ken’s port talk on Mackinac Island. It will be our last shore day as we will sail straight through to Chicago when we leave there. No cars are allowed on the island and we will be provided horse drawn transportation until 2:30pm. I guess after that we walk. The ship sails at 5pm. We will take horse drawn carts to visit the horse carriage museum, the Grand Hotel and the historic fort. We will start leaving the ship at 9am and I guess the last horse cart back to the ship is at 2:30pm. This is true whether you are just going for the included excursion described or you have reserved the optional extra Grand Hotel lunch buffet at $48 per person. We did not spring for that lunch. Anyway, I was desperate for some caffeine and was hot from the rainy day we’d just walked through and had big plans for a Coke Zero. I entered the room to hear Clay ordering a Corona and a white wine. I told him no, but he confirmed it and then I couldn’t get a Coke Zero. I barely stayed awake in that stifling room until the cacophony of question time. I guess no one else could stay awake either since then he repeated everything.

Dinner was OK. It is time for me to go home I think. Clay had Cobb salad and lamb shank. He raved about the salad and has big plans for his remaining lunches now. He had German chocolate cake for dessert. I had oxtail broth and a grilled chicken breast with French fries again. The chicken wasn’t quite cooked through and I couldn’t stay awake anyway. We got back to the room too early and the stewardess hadn’t filled the ice bucket. I really like to have cold water by the bed overnight so I went right before she came back to do it. Oh well. I told Clay I couldn’t stay awake until past 10pm in that stuffy lounge so he left and went for a walk ashore. I’ll stop now and try to get this published. No go. No Internet now for some reason. I’ll try again later or in the morning. Sigh.

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Manitoulin Island

Thursday, August 6, 2015

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We had a pretty spectacular sunset last night. I was up before sunrise but it was happening on another side of the ship so I didn’t see it. I was up this morning before the alarm went off at 6:15am. It was very still outside. The water was smooth and there was land visible nearby. It was Manitoulin Island. This is the largest freshwater island in the world. It has the largest freshwater lake on a freshwater island. In fact, it is riddled with lakes. We docked right in the center of Little Current in sight of the 100 some year old swing bridge. We saw a sign walking out of town that said the swing bridge opens roughly on the hour for approximately 15 minutes. We didn’t check what time we sailed through and had wondered if they had a schedule or opened it for us on arrival. It seems we just showed up per their schedule.

Today was cooler than the last several days have been closer to 70 than to 80F. It was still a very pleasant day. We have not had rain since the first day when we boarded. Fingers crossed it holds out for the rest of the trip.

So, we left the ship at 8:30am for the 2 buses just outside the ship in the parking lot. We were blue bus still. The 2 buses drove about 30 minutes to West Bay or M’Chigeeng. There we visited the Immaculate Conception Church which was rebuilt to represent a teepee. The parishioners sit in the round on tiered seating. There is a thunderbird in the oculus. After a 20 minute visit there, we walked across the street to the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation. There we were divided into groups of about 20 and given a guided tour. It was interesting and informative and included a smudging ceremony in their healing lodge. After all the groups had visited the 3 rooms, we all went outside together to their partially covered amphitheater in the back were they put on a mini-powwow. They had drumming singers and 6 dancers and an MC. It was interesting. We reloaded the buses and got back into town at Little Current by noon. The guide told us to walk out of the boat and take a right and walk down the waterfront a little ways to the ice cream shop and show our keycards to get a free ice cream cone on Lakeshore Excursions. Clay wanted to do that and to look for a t-shirt. We didn’t find ice cream but we eventually found a t-shirt. This is a very small town! They are famous for Hawberries. They are nasty things that grow on Hawthorn trees evidently. Originally it was an insult to call someone a haweater because it meant they were poor. Now it is a compliment, a badge of honor and a gourmet delicacy. The boil the hawberries and make tea or jams or jellies etc from the liquid and it is supposed to be tasty. I have no idea. We looked and only found large jars since they didn’t have a size we could eat in a few days we didn’t buy any.

Tomorrow we should be in Sault Ste. Marie at 11:30am. We haven’t had a port lecture about that yet so I don’t know much. At the last port talk which Clay attended he said someone asked about it and Ken hedged as to whether we would get through the Soo Locks there for our brief sail into and out of Lake Superior. The name of the cruise is the Five Majestic Great Lakes. Five. We’ll see. We are assuming that the port talk with our instructions will be either in the morning or in tonight’s delivered daily program for tomorrow.

Well, we are leaving the close and protected waters of the North Channel above Manitoulin Island and I feel sick again. Oh, yes lunch. We came back and ate in the dining room. It was Southern Fried Chicken. It was tasty. I had a cherry pudding which was reminiscent of a sticky toffee pudding meaning more bread like than pudding like. I liked it. Clay had ice cream. After lunch, we walked about a mile out of town looking for the ice cream shop. Clay said he had Googled it on his phone and it was the only ice cream in Little Current. Of course, it was out on the road to the swing bridge and not in town at all. Clay claimed it was down that road, but I don’t know. I balked about a ¼ mile past where the sidewalk ended. He already had ice cream for lunch! I didn’t want any anyway and it was stupid. No tour guide would have asked anyone on our boat to walk up that hill and over and down and around the other side by a busy highway. Clay walked on but didn’t get a cone or take a photo of the swing bridge sign since he was now pissed at me for not going on. We walked back to town and along the waterfront. Clay came back and asked the security guard at the gate and he told us where to go. It was still tricky to find but more or less where both men said. Then Clay got made because they wouldn’t let him upgrade his baby cone to a double. I had a black cherry baby cone compliments of the Lakeshore Excursions and was happy enough. It was good. We think it was locally made ice cream.

I have to go on the starboard side now to look at the Benjamin Islands of pink granite. I’ll be back!  I’m back. I didn’t make it all the way up to deck 4 to see out the front or the back. (Because last time Ken told us 2 freighters would be the only other ships we’d see all day on Lake Huron and we glued to our port side cabin windows since he said they’d pass by on the port side and nothing. We thought maybe if we had gone up to deck 4 with its promenade deck that we might have seen them but maybe not.) Anyway, when Ken announced starboard side today we assumed that was a 50% proposition so we were trying to get where we could see all sides easily. I had to turn back at deck 3. The ship is in relatively calm water. Maybe 6 inch wavelets. Yet, the ship is swinging/tilting wildly from side to side. I don’t know why we haven’t deployed the stabilizers yet! I stood at the starboard side of deck 1’s lobby and looked out for a while without seeing anything like what Ken described and gave up. Clay continued up top. I guess if he sees something, he’ll have photos.

I will go ahead and try to post this entry now. If dinner is noteworthy, I’ll post about it later. Oh, tonight was scheduled to be a lounge showing of the movie “Somewhere in Time”. There is a sign at reception stating that it has been rescheduled to Friday night. I have not seen or heard anything about what tonight’s replacement entertainment is or if there is any. I’ll have to post about that later too.

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Cruising Lake Huron

Wednesday, August 5, 2015

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Well, dinner last night was good. Clay said the NY strip steak at Cliff Rock was better than the always available one in the dining room. I know we have not seen a filet mignon onboard except upstairs, so we had good beef even if we did have to cook it ourselves. They brought a plate holding a thick, very hot stone insert on the right with a raw piece of meat stuck on it. There was a baked potato and an assortment of raw vegetables on the left. You had to cook everything but the potato. I had to ask the waiter to butterfly my filet as it would never have gotten well done before my rock cooled off. Everyone but Clay wound up asking for a butterfly. The downside was that Clay did not want his steak well done, but he had the thinnest cut of meat and nowhere to move it off the rock so he had to eat his overcooked. They served soup or salad up front and apple or peach crumble for dessert. They also had lamb chops, fish or vegetarian entrees. It was better than I expected but I still hate dining entertainment experiences. The saving grace was the scenery being docked across from Detroit’s downtown skyline at sunset. If the ship had been sailing, I think it would have been much windier and noisier out there. So I enjoyed it and I’m glad I did it but I can’t really recommend it unless you’re a person who likes that kind of thing.

I don’t know what time we wound up sailing but it wasn’t 10pm. I turned out the lights and went to sleep after 10:30pm and my last look out the window was the same as we were still tied up at dock in Windsor then. When I looked out again after midnight and after 2am we were in a narrow channel near land. It was lit up with strings of light and once I saw an old boat with Huron spelled out in lightbulbs with the bow of the ship pointing in that direction. What I could see in the dark with no glasses seemed very campy and retro.

We woke up between 6 and 7am and the sun was already up on the starboard side of the ship. From our port side window we could still see the land in the distance of Michigan. When we came out for breakfast, there was no land visible from the starboard side. Edgar told me this morning that his contract ends shortly after we leave and then he plans to leave for good. He said after he had rested at home in the Philippines for a while that he would start applying for other jobs but that he would not return to Saint Laurent. Their loss. He has been with them for a while from what he told us and the day he had planned to go to Niagara Falls he was disappointed but didn’t seem that upset since he told us next time. I think something must have recently happened to make him want to leave the ship for good. That is too bad and I hope for his sake and Haimark’s that it gets worked out and he can come back and work happily because he is a keeper and so is Saint Laurent. Obviously there have been so missteps and they could do a lot better job with enrichment lectures and keeping passengers informed and communication in general. But, the Great Lakes is a fantastic and unique area and so few travel companies or cruiselines have been able to make a go of it here. It is unfortunate because people from all over the world would find this a unique and interesting destination, but most of the time it is inaccessible to us outsiders. I hope this experience just improves and stays around. I think they are doing a good enough job at the price point.

We attended the morning lecture from 9:30am to 10:30am. It was about the Life Saving Service specifically in the Great Lakes. When we got back to the cabin after 10:30am our cabin had not been serviced, there was no evidence in our corridor that it was still being serviced and the lady next door was just leaving and hanging her service sign on her door. None of this was good news because I was starting to feel terrible. When we woke up there were 1 to 2 foot waves. During breakfast they increased to what the lecturer called 3 to 5 foot seas. My noon they were at least 6 feet and more. Of course we were also getting further from land. We could see it early but by lunch we had not seen land for hours nor any other vessel and only 2 sea gulls. We both killed time around different places on the boat trying to get comfortable before finding the cabin vacated about 10 of noon.

We went to lunch about 12:10pm and missed our usual table. So, we sat next to it because we had seen Edgar serving there, but we got Servy again. He did a better job this time, but also physically abused Edgar. It just made me mad and I already felt terrible. Clay had a burger and apple strudel. I had pork cutlets Milanese and vanilla ice cream with honey. It was all good.

We are back in the cabin after lunch and it is definitely nap time. The question remains for me; how much rougher will it get? I am about at my tolerance limit and I don’t think I can take much more. Do I wait it how and tough it out or do I dose up now with knock-out drugs and call it a day? I don’t know yet. I’ll brush my teeth and try to decide. We had a letter on our bed when we got back in the cabin. It informed us that the disembarkation location in Chicago had changed. Originally we were to dock at Navy Pier. Then they were told there was construction and that we would have to anchor and tender ashore. Since this is a turnaround port they really didn’t want to have to do that and neither would I. So, they are docking 12 miles out at something like the International Port. There was a notice that there were no taxis or private cars allowed there and no public transit so they were offering a $45 pp transfer to O’Hare. Since our flight leaves right before noon, we are accepting that offer. Otherwise they were offering complimentary transfers to Navy Pier or Palmer House (their post-cruise hotel) at 9am. We expect to leave at 8am as soon as we are docked by making the choice we have made. I don’t know how they are notifying the arriving passengers on the next cruise. Maybe they aren’t hence the complimentary transfer to and from Navy Pier.

I had to take a Dramamine and knock myself out for about 3 hours. The good news was that the waves had returned to morning size when I woke up around 5pm. Clay had gone to the port talk. He learned that our CD Ken is from Decatur, IL. Our blue bus will leave at 8:30am with part of Orange bus mixed in. We will dock at Little Current on Manitoulin Island. We will get back around 12:30pm and the other half of the ship will go to the “Pow Wow”. The Orange bus is divided between morning and afternoon because there aren’t enough buses here. It seems we’ll come ashore right in town and town is only about 1 block in any direction with 3 restaurants if we want to eat ashore. You’d have thought if they thought we wanted to eat ashore that they’d have mentioned in advance that we’d be docked in downtown Windsor until after 10pm! Anyway.

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Don’t be fooled by the term Lake. These waters are as rough as anything on the seas. I knew that already but until you get here and see nothing but waves for hours and you have to keep reminding yourself that this is all fresh water!

We went to dinner and got our favorite table and waiter. Clay got colcannon soup and osso bucco and ice cream for dessert. I had colcannon soup and pesto ziti and baked apple for dessert. Clay has been drinking a red wine from South Australia, a Shiraz he likes. I hope he knows what the label is so he can have it at home.

We are sitting after dinner in the now empty lounge waiting to get back in our cabin again. I don’t know what is going on with cabin servicing, but I hope it gets worked out soon.

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Lake Erie, Windsor, Detroit and Dearborn

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

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We slept better last night. Lake Erie was a bit calmer than Lake Ontario had been. The waves were smaller in any event. We woke up to arrive at breakfast shortly after it started. Edgar was looking for us and pulled out the chair I usually sit in when he spotted us. This morning we finally found the chink in Edgar’s armor. Somehow he confuses English Muffins and bagels. I ordered a toasted English Muffin before and he kept telling me he would bring my bagel. I kept correcting him that it was not a bagel I wanted. When he finally brought it, it was an English Muffin. Today I ordered the chef’s special of Eggs Benedict, so I didn’t need anything else. Clay had determined to eat from the buffet. He ordered a toasted bagel. Edgar did not understand. I switched the words and told him a bagel, toasted. He seemed to get that and repeated it. Clay went up and got lox, cream cheese, capers, onions, etc. Edgar returned with my Eggs Benedict and Edgar ignored Clay. Clay flagged him down and asked again for a toasted bagel, a bagel toasted and Edgar again acted confused by the request. Clay indicated the collection of things on his plate and mimed placing them on a bagel, toasted. Edgar acted like he understood finally and left. When he came back it was with a toasted English Muffin. Clay was furious. I was amused. I was ready to try again with Edgar to get the toasted bagel, but Clay just waved me off and acted grateful to Edgar and thanked him. Then fumed and bitched while he had his muffin and cream cheese and lox. He told me that surely they must have bagels aboard. I agreed with all the cold buffet accoutrements that they must. I pointed out that it seemed like Edgar might think they were the same thing given my experience the day before. Oh, well. Clay says he just won’t try again. Shoot, I hope I don’t come down with a craving for a toasted bagel with cream cheese now!

We went to the morning port talk by Ken, the CD. He told us what to expect today going ashore in Windsor, ON. We are sailing until about 1pm. (Oh, for some reason the bar did not open at 9am or so today. I don’t know why since we are here. This is bad news for me because no ice. I had to take warm water in my bottle yesterday too because the bar was closed. I could understand that because we left around 7am. The program said it would open at 3:30pm today as it did yesterday. Neither of which made any sense since we were mostly all off the boat at that time. Anyway, they finally opened it after 10am because people were complaining so much about not being able to get a cold drink. Even in the restaurant when you order ice water to drink, they don’t serve ice there. I don’t know if you can get ice anywhere other than a bar. I don’t remember if I mentioned it yesterday, but we were thrilled to find that when we returned shortly before 7pm that our turndown service had happened and our ice bucket was filled! That is the only time that has happened!) Back to the port talk.  We should be called to disembark by bus colors. Onboard the bus we will get our passports. It should take us about 45 minutes to drive to Windsor, ON to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn or the reverse. That will include a border crossing each way, hence the passports. We will return the passports when we leave the buses to reboard the ship in Windsor. Saint Laurent will remain docked while we are gone today. We will divide into smaller groups for an hour guided tour of the museum. Then we will have 90 minutes of free time there. We should be back to the ship in time for dinner at 7pm. We have our reservations tonight at the outdoor aft Rock Cliff Grille with the hot lava rocks. We’ll see.

BTW this morning aboard, Clay has posted and linked his photos for the first 3 days of this trip.

Clay decided since we were outside watching the sail in to Detroit that we should eat outside on the aft deck 4 at Cliff Rock for lunch. That worked out nicely for him. He had a cold beer and fish and chips. No idea what they served in the dining room, but I have to wonder if the hot dish and soup served on the buffet only back there aren’t the same as the soup and chef’s special in the dining room. Cold food was a pasta salad and salmon wrap and cold cut finger sandwiches. I could stand to skip a couple meals anyway.

So, we were tied up alongside a park on the Detroit River by 1pm.  Unfortunately, it took until 2pm to get the gangway attached. Evidently the last time they were here they docked in Detroit and this was an unforeseen downside of the stated goal of keeping the ship in Canada until Sault Ste. Marie. I’m not sure what they’ll do here in the future. If there is another place to dock here that would work better. The thing was that they put up a fence and it enclosed a small area of trees and park benches that blocked the lowering and placing of the gangway. The other problem was that they had to get the gangway attached high on the ship to clear the railing that runs along the waterfront walkway. Anyway all that took most of our free time here. Then once in the bus, we took the tunnel right to the Detroit Port anyway where we had to all file off the bus and through the border patrol station and bag check and back onto the bus. It was after 3pm when we arrived at the Henry Ford Museum for our tour. It closed at 5pm. We were on the way back to the ship before 5:30pm. The trip back was quicker. We took the Ambassador Bridge and Canadian border patrol sent an agent onto the bus instead of us through a line. The local guide sent us off the bus with word about what we could do until 10pm when we sail. That was the first time we heard anything about not sailing as soon as we got back. We’ll see. The Henry Ford Museum was eclectic. Even though we had a guided 1-hour tour I am not sure I understood the mission or even the history of the museum. Our blue bus group was a bit smaller than yesterday but still probably over 30 people and they did not subdivide us into smaller groups as announced. So, most of the time we couldn’t hear our docent. I think they were just disorganized and flustered because we were so late and we all more or less arrived at the same time. We were meant to leave the ship staggered, but I guess the people in the first 2 buses called didn’t get that because when our bus was called 3^rd their buses were still standing. Of course, it didn’t help that no one from Go Next or Saint Laurent never asked people who were opting out of the tour to let them know. So, they found out when they had passports unclaimed and had to come back to the ship with them to find out where the people were and some of them had already just gone ashore independently. Another reason it would have been a good idea to put the all aboard and departure times in the daily program. Anyway, we enjoyed what we had of the planned excursion and we’re back. We’re assuming the worst that the ship will actually sail when everyone is back aboard, whenever that happens to be and staying put. We have our outdoor dining cook it yourself on hot lava rocks dining reservation at 7pm anyway. I’ll post this now and assume nothing else newsworthy will happen today.

Tomorrow is a sailing day. No stops for us tomorrow in Lake Huron. That may mean some periods of no Internet. I will post tomorrow's entry asap. Fingers crossed that Lake Huron has the smallest waves of all the Great Lakes!

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Welland Canal and Niagara Falls

Monday, August 4, 2015

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We were up early today. We were up before the alarm went off. We were up because we were up for hours overnight because the water was so rough and the splashing against and windows and the slamming into the bottom of the hull had so awake and horrified. It was not a restful night like last night on the St. Lawrence River. No one made an announcement but evidently we entered Lake Ontario last night just before dinner. It got progressively rougher all night. We were scheduled to be docked at Port Weller at 5am. It was 7am before we were docked there. We picked up our pilot about 5am. Mercifully, shortly after that we entered the breakwater to enter the Welland Canal. The Saint Laurent will spend all day transiting the canal and 8 lifting locks while we are off today in buses.

Breakfast was at 6:30am. We sat with Edgar again. We really like him. He is a great waiter. He told us this morning that he hoped to get his work done quickly after the passengers left and to get to go to see Niagara Falls. We had him again for dinner and his boss didn’t let him go. How disappointing. So, we still left the boat on schedule between 7:30am and 7:45am to load our color-assigned buses. We got our color assignments with our final cruise documents. We are blue bus. There are 5 buses. I think they tried to put schools together if they could but I’m not sure. It seemed like a lot of Tulane people were on our bus, but I don’t know if all of them were. We were instructed yesterday to pick up our listening device and to carry them today, but we never used them. So, we drove about 30 minutes to get to Niagara Falls. We had a lot of different views and a drive through the town which has built up like crazy around the falls. We were scheduled to do the Hornblower cruise from the Canadian side (the Maid of the Mist still does the US side) at 10:15am, so there was time to kill. I learned on the bus that we did not have to take the 20 minute boat ride into the mist of Horseshoe Falls. I saw a Starbucks about a block away where we disembarked the buses and decided not to go on the boat for good. I had been waffling about it as I didn’t really want to. I think it is stupid to take a boat to the bottom of waterfalls to get wet. We watched the Hornblower sit and bob like an ocean tender from the Visitor’s Center and I really didn’t want to do it and now I had another excuse. I bought my most expensive ever Starbucks mug at $17.95 Canadian. I used my $10US giftcard from Stuart Jones again! Thanks Stuart! It is one of the new design mugs and I really prefer the old designs but I like this one. I rejoined the bus and Clay without any trouble. The same cannot be said of everyone else on the bus. We had a terrible guide today. She could talk a blue streak without actually communicating any necessary information. So, we got back on the road and it was time for lunch. We drove to Niagara-on-the-Lake and the Peller Estates Vineyard. We had a 3-course lunch in the Cellars. It was good and quite well done. After lunch we had a winery tour and tasting. Their specialty was a red icewine. We don’t usually like icewines, but this one was very nice. After lunch, we drove around Niagara-on-the-Lake, a scenic and historic little town. We drove by the 2 forts on either side of the mouth of the Niagara River. I remember visiting those forts as a child. That was another reason I didn’t want to do the boat ride. I didn’t do it as a child either. The other thing I remembered was stopping at a fruit stand and then eating sweet black cherries. Guess what? I got to do it again! We stopped at Walker’s where there is a tiny wedding chapel and I got cherries and ate them. I was especially glad because lunch’s dessert was blueberries 3 ways! We drove along the route of the canal for a bit and we stopped at lock 3 and watched a freighter get lifted. We arrived at lock 8 in time to see Saint Laurent in it but we drove on by. It would have been nice to park there outside the lock and get to take photos of our boat exiting the lock but they raced us on past the vertical lift bridge at Port Colbourne. When we got there we just sat in the buses waiting. I was looking back for the bridge to lift and right before it did I interrupted Wendy and asked if we could go outside and watch and take photos of the boat coming under. She agreed and we started unloading, soon all the buses were letting people out. I don’t know why they didn’t do this at the parking outside lock 8.

We overheard some people who ate last night at Cliff Rock Grille, the hot lava rock place, raving about it after not being sure beforehand. So, Clay now has our reservation for tomorrow night. Dinner tonight was at 7pm. It was minutes after we reboarded and coincided with entering Lake Erie. It is just as rough as Ontario was. I guess now I am glad we are mostly sailing at night! Though tomorrow we don’t dock in Windsor until around 1pm. I hope it isn’t this rough all morning tomorrow! Dinner. Clay had escargot that he proclaimed delicious, as good as Marina’s. He had the chef’s special duck. He ate it all so I guess it was good. He had the lemon lime pie, which he declared was a perfect balance and the best. I had an iceberg lettuce wedge with vinaigrette followed by the always available chicken breast. My fries were not refried tonight which made Clay very happy. I had a chocolate mousse pie for dessert. We were back to the cabin by 8pm but the turndown had happened before we reboarded the boat. The daily program for tomorrow was delivered just before 9pm. I took it in my pajamas. Well, it has been a long busy day and I am somewhat sleep deprived and a little queasy. So, I’ll stop now and see if I can get this published.

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Sailing the Saint Lawrence Seaway

Sunday, August 2, 2015

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With all the locks we had to transit overnight and the pingponging back and forth and the shaking of the side thrusters, you’d have expected that we might have a sleepless night. You’d be wrong. We must have been exhausted because we slept right through to daylight! Clay said I had some kind of crisis in the night crying and crying out. He thought I was awake and either having an attack of vertigo or a muscle spasm or cramping from the exhaustion combined with the grip of the tremor, but I have no idea what happened. I wasn’t awake I guess because I don’t remember doing it. I didn’t get up all night and I observed nothing, so I call that a sound night’ sleep.

The daily program says sunrise was to be 6:08am but it was fully light when we opened the shades at 6am. We entered a lock soon after getting up and we hustled up and walked around to get a look. It was a deep lock and the wall was right outside our window. Instant night! We went to breakfast and sat on the other side in the dining room. That is where you can get food to order. I had the daily special pineapple pancakes. They have a buffet there as well of oatmeal and cold foods. They have a buffet out back on aft deck 4 and a buffet earlier in the lounge. The bar opens at 9am!

After breakfast we were up and around and outdoors for the Eisenhower Lock at Massena, NY. It was a deep lock too. A waiter at the Cliff Rock Grille on deck 4 aft outdoors told us it was the lock where the Saint Laurent had gashed in the bow ramming the wall of the lock earlier this summer. Embarrassing.

We went to the port talk with the CD in the lounge from 9:30 to 10:30am. We will be off the ship all day tomorrow from 7am to maybe 6pm as the Saint Laurent transits the Welland Canal. If Clay had never been to Niagara Falls we would probably find that interesting and significant to stay aboard for, like the Suez Canal but with locks! We will take the excursion. It sounds nice except for the Hornblower boat trip under the falls which sounds stupid. I guess everyplace that has a falls has to have a boat to take people under to get wet. Anyway. We will be mostly in Canada for the day and will visit Peller Estates, a winery for a tour, tasting and a lunch. We had to place our lunch order today. Beef short ribs (me) or some kind of lake fish (Clay) or vegetarian. We have both been unable to keep comparing this with either Marina (I guess since it is so fresh in our minds) or ACL’s Queen of the Mississippi (maybe due to the size). Saint Laurent compares favorably to both. It is not as nice as Marina but nicer than QoM. As Clay keeps pointing out, it should be nicer because the price point is higher than either of those 2 experiences. We are nearing what looks like a large dam now so I need to go! Later.

Still don’t know what the large dam looking thing was but I think some kind of flood control since parts were raised and small boats were going under them. Anyway… we watched a film about the Great Lakes and the attempt to revive the sturgeon population, the return of bald eagles and the unfortunate introduction of alien species either by accident or intention. We have had 3 bald eagle sightings this morning, so that has been exciting. Clay saw one, I saw one with him and we saw a pole with a nest atop it with 2 bald eagles sitting on it. I kind of hate being inside when all we paid to come see is outside but it is bright and sunny and either too hot in the sun or too cold in the wind of sailing in the shade. We haven’t found the perfect viewing spot yet. I don’t suppose we will!

Lunch and we’ve had our first service lapse. We wanted to sit out back and enjoy the weather and the views. But, we didn’t go before noon and opening because Clay wasn’t sure about that. Evidently that is the only way you’d have gotten a seat back there. Or maybe my watch is wrong. The clock on the bedside is about 10 minutes faster than mine. Maybe we were much later arriving than I think. I don’t know. But, we did get the chance to speak to a woman from Tulane that we had done Dordogne with on an October alumni trip last year. She was with her husband this year. Anyway, we returned to our dining room table from last night. Of course, we didn’t get our wonderful waiter again. We got Servy from India who proceeded to largely ignore us. Clay ordered a burger mainly because he loved my crispy refried fries last night. I suspect the reason they were refried is because they had been previously fried for lunch. He did not get refried fries but normal ones. I ordered the chef special Indonesian bami something. It was a bowl full of bell peppers and onions but I managed to pick and make a meal out of peanut butter sauced chicken and pasta. We were both coveting our old waiter’s table next door where they were enjoying some delightful looking ice creams in architectural looking bowls. Alas, that was not to be because we were never offered a dessert menu. After being ignored for about 20 minutes after he removed our dishes, we got up and left hoping to find the sundaes being served up and aft. They were not serving ice cream back there and there were still no seats. There were more people milling about waiting for a seat than there were available seats. Unless you just happened to be standing next to one when it was vacated, you’d never get a seat. We couldn’t bear to play that and left. Clay went to sit up front on deck 4 behind the high metal mesh screen which doesn’t slow down the wind and I am back in the cabin enjoying the view off the port side from our big windows. I am also enjoying the quiet. I am missing the broader view of outdoors though. We just passed through some kind of narrows. The CD announced it twice but neither time could either of us understand the name he was saying. It is a splendid Sunday afternoon and the area was packed with recreation enjoyers. I smell a nap in the very near future.

This afternoon there is a lecture about the Civil War in the Great Lakes area and there is tea time trivia. I will skip both, though I hate to miss the CD’s announce prizes! There is a Go Next cocktail welcome reception from 5 to 6pm and I suspect we’ll go to that. Why I don’t know because you can get free alcohol or other beverages from 9am on. Clay had a Heineken this morning with the port talk! I don’t know how people drink all day. I guess some people aren’t sensitive or else build up an immunity. I almost fall asleep after a glass of wine with dinner! Gotta go see the Singer sewing machine inventor’s mansion on the starboard side! Later.

It was an impressive castle. That is what the signs called it and it looked to be quite the tourist attraction. Later on the same starboard side we saw Boldt Castle. It was an even bigger tourist attraction. This is a crazy scenic area, mysteriously much more populated than say the Mississippi in a place that would seem to only be able to be used much in the summer. But, I don’t know that for a fact. It just seems like you wouldn’t want to be here in winter. We eventually found vacant seats at the back outdoor restaurant as they were shutting down from lunch. We had to keep moving around so they could vacuum and clean to get ready for dinner, but we had a 180 degree view off the back out of the wind and in the shade. I am certain that we saw more than 1000 islands.

In a perfect world, in the same amount of luggage, I’d have remembered to pack a nightlight for the bathroom, some magnets to hold papers on the wall (the desk is little more than a shelf and it holds the ice bucket and water carafe because apparently the water from the tap is not potable) and I’d have brought my own binoculars.

I am trying for a nap now and Clay is searching for his long craved beer. There are a lot of people drinking at the back but Clay can’t find a bartender or waiter working. I told him to just go to the deck 2 forward bar that is supposed to open from 9am and carry it back there. For all we know, that is what the other people did. I think we have just about decided to avoid the cocktail party. The only reason we’d go is if Go Next’s hostesses had some information to impart and that seems an unlikely venue so we’re inclined to skip but afraid to miss something. We’ll see.

OK. Clay came back and thought to wake me up from my nap. I had already been awakened by banging on the hull outside. He said it was a wooden and rope ladder with one pilot leaving and one boarding. That would explain it. It did not explain the line of new framed photographs being hung down the length of our hallway all afternoon when we’d all be off the ship all day tomorrow! Anyway, he had decided to attend the Go Next welcome cocktails. We both changed into long pants and different shoes and Clay put on a collared shirt. This was not exactly an informal affair. They checked us each in and got us a drink and then escorted us to our appropriate alumni group. This is our first time with Go Next vs. Gohagan and so we were surprised. Of course our first Tulane alumni trip to Antarctica, we were the only ones from Tulane. To Dordogne last year there was a group of 5 friends and then the 2 of us so again, no socializing. There are 16 people here under the invitation of Tulane. We got to spend over an hour with them while we drank wine. Then Clay insisted that we leave first because he thought the dining room opened at 6pm. I told him repeatedly that I had checked and we couldn’t go to dinner until after 6:30pm, but he insisted that he had checked to. He checked the time for the reservations grille in back! We came back to the room since it is right across the stairway from the dining room entrance.

We made a point of changing tables tonight to make sure we were in Edgar’s area. He knew we had bad service at lunch because he pointed out to us that our table from last night and at noon were in his area at dinner but not at lunchtime. We assured him that we had figured that out. Well it is open seating so at some level you have to take what you can get. We got the two-top he had served at lunch only because the couple who had occupied it the last 2 meals didn’t get there first. Clay had some oysters baked in Pernod followed by the always available NY Strip steak. He was hoping for my last night’s crispy refried fries but still didn’t get them. Oh well. I had pumpkin soup and spaghetti in olive oil. That is a lot of pasta in one day! For dessert, I had warm cherry cobbler with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was big and Clay ate half. He had the longed for ice cream sundae from lunch time and it was a disappointment. I had craved chocolate ice cream with marshmallow sauce. The menu doesn’t say what flavors or toppings, just your choice of flavors and toppings. It turns out they only ever have chocolate, strawberry and vanilla. Edgar knew they didn’t have marshmallow and wasn’t completely sure about caramel but came back with it. It wasn’t very tasty but Clay ate it all. He liked mine better but only for the ice cream, I think. We were back to the room by a little after 7:30pm and it had not been serviced. We needed the daily program for tomorrow because during the port lecture Ken didn’t know yet when breakfast would be served. He said to check the program before going to bed. Um….  I got a book and we tried upstairs in the smoker’s area since it was dinner time and it is quieter and less windy there than any other place we could sit outside but it was raining. We wound up sitting in the lounge as they prepared it for the evening’s musical entertainment and dancing at 8:30pm. It was 8:30pm before they finished our room too. We kept taking turns checking and it was after 7:30pm before they started working on our hall and from the far end so ours was the next to the last to get done. Breakfast is at 6:30am tomorrow. We have to board the buses at 7:45am and dinner tomorrow night will be at 7pm. It promises to be a long day. But, Niagara Falls! Clay has never been.

Photo Slideshow

Boarding Saint Laurent

Saturday, August 1, 2015

Photo Slideshow

Though you will see linking words at the top and bottom of each entry for photo slideshows, Clay informs me that he will not be attempting to upload photos until we get home. So, if you find the links live, great. Otherwise, you’ll have to come back in a few weeks to see his pics. Sorry. We get 2 hours of Internet complimentary per person and evidently we can’t get any more than that, so Clay doesn’t want to mess with it. That covered, let me get on to our grueling day.

We were up very early to get started. Clay wanted to leave home at 6am for the drive to the airport and we were on schedule. Our first flight was delayed about 10 to 15 minutes, enough to cause Clay alarm because we only had about a 35 minute layover in LaGuardia. It turned out that didn’t matter. Our landing at LGA was terrifying. Our flight leaving LGA was over 3 hours late departing. The cargo door on our first plane had a broken screw and they couldn’t find a replacement part. Just as we were despairing that our risky day of sailing flights were going to cause us to miss the cruise, AA decided to replace the plane. That saved our bacon. Our takeoff from LGA was just as terrifying a roller coaster ride as our landing, but it lasted a lot longer. Then we still barely made it aboard before the 5pm deadline because the cab got lost or something and drove back and forth and then got stuck in a summer Saturday in Old Port and gridlocked people. We eventually found our way to the MS Saint Laurent at Alexandra Quay up front just off the sidewalk of Promenade du Vieux-Port. We needn’t have worried. We walked up the gangway to board on deck 4 only to go down the stairs to deck 2 and stand in line to check in at the front of the lounge. According to the angry people in the lounge, this was the shortest the line had been all day. There were about 30 people in line and it was very slow moving. I think it took us about an hour to get our photos taken, our passports collected and our credit card scanned and to collect our keycards.  (Inexplicably, while I was typing this the stewardess delivered new keycards and told us to ditch the ones we got earlier this evening!) This was followed by an incomprehensible exercise in life boat drill. The point of which should be to teach you what happens in an emergency. I can only hope we don’t have one because, wth! They didn’t assign lifeboats or groups or tell you what to do, just kind of herded cats. It may have had something to do with the majority of people having been in the lounge most of the day availing themselves of free booze since they couldn’t get checked in. We were just tired and hungry and ready to get on with it. Eventually we met someone’s standard and were dismissed to the lounge again for an intro from the cruise director, Ken Davis. We’ve gotten a couple of somewhat different itineraries by now and he tells us that we have to be flexible because of locks. There will be 7 locks, all tonight if I understood correctly. We started through the first one at dinner. We hastened through and went outside to see. Our cabin is on deck one aft of the stairs. Almost in midship. There are no passenger cabins lower than one. We are in 122 and the doctor’s office is across the hall. The main dining room is aft. There are small outdoor decks on 2 and 3 from the stairs. On deck 4 you can get to an outdoor promenade deck and to the front and aft of the ship. There are outdoor stairs to deck 5 and more outdoor space. You have to go back down to 4 to go from midship to aft outdoors on 5 and the bridge is forward on 5. Dinner was good. We had a nice, friendly and efficient Filippino waiter. For those who may remember my last summer’s rant about the “training” staff on ACL, let me tell you especially after the leaderless fiasco of the life boat drill that I was worried about the waitstaff. But, no worries because these were experienced professionals. There wasn’t a huge selection but it was adequate. There were a lot of appetizer courses to choose from. I had onion soup and Clay had salad. Clay had the lamb chop special and I had the always available chicken breast with very good refried fries and some vegetables. Clay had cheese, nuts and fruit for dessert and I had White Forest Cake. I had Pinot Grigio and Clay had a Corona and red wine. We stayed out to see us through the first lock. They say we have to go up about 580-some feet to get from Montreal at about 20 feet above sea level to Chicago at about 600 above. We had another scare as we untied and tried to sail out of the lock. We understand the ship had a big gash in the front end a month or so ago from ramming into the wall of a lock. We barely missed doing it again! I don’t know who was Captain then or now, but lessons learned and all. C’mon! As I type this the cabin is vibrating from the side thrusters. I think it may not be the restful night we need if we really do go through the other 6 locks overnight. Tomorrow is our cruising day though. I am thinking naps! Otherwise the itinerary sounds pretty busy. There is a second restaurant outside on the aft of deck 4. It is cooking your own food on hot lava rocks. It requires reservations and Clay is upset because I refuse to go. I hate that kind of ridiculousness. BTW, the dining is open seating. Oh. last thing of interest. This, Alexandra Quay, is the furthest point upriver that we came on Marina in May. So, today we started at the same point on Saint Laurent and headed upriver for the Great Lakes. Cool!

Photo Slideshow