.JPG)
I knew nothing about “Anne of Green Gables” until this trip. But after six visits to Prince Edward Island I’ve been straightened out. This girl is Canada’s version of Huckleberry Finn. They run the Anne movie on the cabin TV’s, there’s an “Anne” store in downtown Charlottetown. There’s a girl dressed as Anne right on the dock to greet the visiting passengers, with a photographer of course. Out in the boonies, where the actual Green Gables are located, the tour of the “Anne” house is very popular, and a local mall offers this nifty statue of Anne. .JPG)
The Big Fiddle (biggest in the world) is in Sydney, which is on Cape Breton Island, which is part of Nova Scotia, which is a Province of Canada.JPG)
Highly prominent statue of Champlain in Quebec City. He founded the city exactly 400 years ago.
.JPG)
Looking down on the Maasdam on the St. Lawrence River, from Quebec City.JPG)
Strolling in Quebec City
5 comments:
Hey Steve, thanks for the photos. They are amazing! This blog is terrific, I love reading about your adventures.... I often playback the video of your gig at Three Village Inn. Sure do miss everyone!
Enjoy the 2nd half of your gig and keep the reports going....
See you in September (sounds like a song)...!!!
Swagette Susan
must be fun taking these little trips off the ship...
ps. that picture really puts the ship in better perspective, it's quite massive-it could be a whole city...
Very nice to hear from Albany Suzie. You may or may not be aware -- that 5-minute collage from TVI has been a great promotional tool. It pretty much opened the door for me with Celebrity. A longer edit - some 45 minutes long - was used to sell me to Holland America. But that edit also has “Somewhere Out There” and the infamous “Man of La Mancha” performance with Gianni.
In November that footage will be 5 years old. But I’ve gotten a lot of mileage (pardon the pun) out of it.
Hey Joe --
One of the most frequent questions I get is about my spare time -- can I get off the ship at every port ? The answer is yes, for the most part -- the only exception is IPM duty, which happens about once in every 8 ports. On this 35-day Big Trip, there have been 24 port days, and I’ve had IPM on only three of them - Cherbourg, France; Isafjordur (Iceland) ; and in a few days Nanortalik, Greenland.
Other employees, especially the hundreds of Filipinos and Indonesians, are much more limited in their port time. Sometimes just a few hours between shifts, sometimes a full afternoon in a rotation system. So I appreciate my freedom. Sometimes it’s freedom to see nothing. For instance the town of Milford Haven in Wales was about as exciting as West Islip.
As for ship size -- the Maasdam is one of Holland America’s smallest ships. 1200 passengers, 550 crew, 750 feet long……..compare that to RCCL’s “Explorer of the Seas” -- over 1000 feet long, very very tall, very very wide, with a possible 3600 passengers and 1200 crew. So wide that it can’t get through the Panama Canal.
The trend is toward bigger, larger capacity ships -- RCCL keeps outdoing itself year after year. Their “Freedom of the Seas” ship is the largest cruise ship in the world, and they’re presently building another one to top that.
The fabled Titanic was “only” 950 feet long, with a mere capacity of 2200 passengers & crew. Many passengers here on the Maasdam are strongly opposed to the bigger ships. They like the “intimacy” of the Maasdam. They’re more likely to make new friends and feel cozy here.
NEVERTHELESS -- in early 2009 the Maasdam will go into drydock for a few weeks, where it’ll be renovated and somehow expanded in size. One rumor says they will literally chop the ship in half and added a new section to extend the length.
Post a Comment