October 30 - Charleston

First here’s the trivia answer from yesterday’s question.  The shortest commercial airline flight is between two of the Orkney Islands in Scotland, Westray and Papa Westray.  It travels a distance of 1.7 miles and the record speed was 53 seconds.  It’s flown by Loganair, a regional Scottish carrier.  Not many frequent flyer miles for that one!

After a day and a half at sea we’ve arrived on a beautiful sunny day in Charleston, SC.  I’ve been to Charleston before so I decided to take a tour to a plantation on the other side of the Cooper River in Mt. Pleasant.  The plantation is called Boone Hall and it’s one of the oldest working plantations in the US since it has been producing agricultural crops for more than 320 years.  The site was a wedding gift of 470 acres from a large landowner to his daughter and her new husband, Major John Boone. It’s not known when the first house was built on the land because the current plantation house was built after the property had gone through a succession of owners. A Canadian bought the plantation in 1935 and he and his wife decided that the existing house didn’t comport with what they thought a southern plantation should look like, so they razed it and replaced it with a modern (1936) house which fit their image of an antebellum mansion.

Boone Hall

One very striking and original feature is the entrance driveway, known as the Grand Avenue of Oaks. It’s three quarters of a mile long and consists of 88 live oak trees and one magnolia.  The trees are draped with Spanish moss and the lane is very beautiful.  It’s said that the Grand Avenue was the inspiration for Twelve Oaks, Ashley Wilkes home in Gone with the Wind. Among the original plantation buildings still standing  are several brick slave quarters  on the left of the driveway as one approaches the main house.  The plantation grew in size from 470 acres originally to nearly 740 and pre-Civil War there were as many as 320 slaves on the property.  Not all the housing for those people were brick but the ones that exist are quite substantial 12 x 30 foot brick buildings with raised plank floors and a fireplace.  They were actually occupied until the 1940’s  because after the Civil War many of the former slaves remained on the property and worked, most as sharecroppers.

Grand Avenue of Oaks

One of the brick slave quarters

Another view

A little of the history of the original owner, John Boone, was kind of interesting.  He was a little bit of a scoundrel.  He trafficked in slaves, dealt with pirates and concealed stolen goods.  He was kicked off the South Carolina Grand Council, the local colonial governing body, twice for his activities.  Nevertheless, he and his wife were ancestors of Edward and John Rutledge, two of the fledgling country’s founding fathers in the 18th century.

In front of the main house are two formal gardens with brick walkways.  Because it’s so late in the season most of the flowers were fading, but there were still lots of bright colors and plenty of butterflies around.  We had an opportunity to walk through the ground floor of the  main house, but I chose not to.  It was such a nice day that I opted to walk through the gardens, look at the slave quarters and walk over to the stables.  One of the owners in the 20th century wanted to create an important racehorse stable.  That effort didn’t pan out, but one important horse did live and train there.  His name was Princequillo, at one time considered to be the best long-distance horse in America.  Of more interest to me is that one of his daughters was  the mother of Secretariat, perhaps the greatest racehorse ever.

Not much color because it's late in the season

I was able to catch this butterfly as he landed for a moment

The stables

A few of the horses in one of the paddocks along the Grand Avenue

After we got back on the bus we had a riding tour of Charleston.  Our driver Billy deserved a medal as far as I was concerned because maneuvering a big bus through Charleston’s narrow streets is no easy feat.  Charleston is built on a peninsula bounded by the Ashley and Cooper Rivers.  Near the tip of the peninsula is the area called the Battery overlooking the harbor  and in sight of a couple of forts, one of which in particular we all have heard of, Fort Sumter. On April 12, 1861 South Carolina militia fired on the Union soldiers in what everyone agrees was the opening salvo of that war. South Carolina had officially seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860.  The Union soldiers surrendered a day after the bombardment began because they had no hope of reinforcement.  The fort was not retaken until February 22, 1865.

Fort Sumter

Our guide Keith was a native Charlestonian and very knowledgeable.  The city has a long history, not quite as old as my part of Virginia, and played a significant role in the American Revolution too.  I didn’t know this, but during the Revolution Charleston was the object of a long siege before being captured by the British.  I did take exception to a few things Keith said because he made it sound like South Carolina was the most significant player in the Revolution, and of course as a Virginian I know that we had a little battle at a place called Yorktown where “the world turned upside down” on October 19, 1781.  But I’ll concede that Charleston was important too.

I wrote earlier about John Boone being a little bit of a scoundrel and I heard during the ride about another such man we've all heard of, Rhett Butler.  If you remember Gone with the Wind, Rhett was from Charleston.  There was an actual blockade runner here in Charleston during the Civil War and many people think he was the basis of Margaret Mitchell's character. His name was George Trenholm and a lot of his history is similar to that of Rhett Butler's blockade-running career.  We passed his old home which is now a private girls' school. A couple of the alumni from the school are pretty famous - Madeline L'Engle and Barbara Bush.

Our driving tour lasted a little too long actually, but we did get to pass through most of the neighborhoods.  Unfortunately, when you’re in a bus you can’t get photos.  I thought one of the nicest places we drove through was the campus of The Citadel, one of only two state-run military academies, the other being the Virginia Military Institute.  Eventually we made it back to the dock and reboarded the ship.  It was a very pleasant day.

The parade ground at The Citadel

In the evening we had a Halloween dance party.  We had it a day before the actual day because October 31st will be the last night of the cruise for most of my fellow passengers and they will be packing.  I was amazed at the number of people who had costumes of some sort.  There were lots of witches, spiders, devils and werewolves.  I mainly watched the dancing tonight because we were doing a lot of rocking and rolling and being on a crowded dance floor can be a recipe for disaster.  I have a good time just watching sometimes.

A couple of pictures showing some of the Halloween decorations

October 29 - Is that Cape Hatteras light I see in the distance?

At noon today the captain gave his midday report and told us we were about 15 miles off Cape Hatteras and if we looked really hard we might see the lighthouse there.  I looked and I just saw a calm ocean.

So, what have I been doing for the last two days?  We sailed from New York at noon yesterday.  I stood on my veranda and took way too many pictures but that’s what makes taking photos with an iPhone so great; you can delete, delete, delete. Once again I thought how beautiful the New York City skyline is.  I hadn’t been there in many, many years and I must say that I understand how people find it exciting, intriguing, and exhilarating. I confess that for me it’s just too overwhelming, noisy and crowded.  A short visit was fine for me.  I also have to say that I didn’t see some of the bad stuff I’ve seen on the news or read about in the paper with only one exception.  There were a few panhandlers, but I can see them at home too.  There was a lot more trash on the streets than in many cities I’ve visited but it wasn’t overflowing.  Our guide Darrell did shout to someone in another group when we were near Ground Zero to warn her that a pickpocket was trying to take something from her bag.  That wasn't unique to NYC.  A friend of ours was robbed going up in an elevator in the local hospital; it can happen anywhere.  

I’m going to add a few more New York photos here because I thought some of the buildings were interesting.

I thought the triangular building looked neat.

I liked the Grand Dame of New York skyscrapers peeking out between her more modern competition

This one intrigued me because it looked like a little nudge might tip it over.

After we sailed I intended to load my photos to my laptop and write something, but I got sidetracked.  I’ve met some lovely and interesting people and had some good conversations.  Last night I dined at a table hosted by a guest entertainer who came on in NYC.  She’s an expatriate of Ukraine, her family having emigrated years before the war began.  What I found interesting after talking to her was that her family are all ethnic Russians who lived in an eastern, majority ethnic Russian part of the country.  As a result her perspective is a little different from some other Ukrainians I’ve met. Regardless, she too expressed her fervent hope that the war comes to an end.

Today the temperature has risen enough that for the first time it was really pleasant sitting outside.  They turned the heaters off in the outdoor dining venues and I had breakfast outside in the Colonnade.  I’m hopeful that we’ve left cold weather behind for the duration.  At noon we played trivia and once again Miss Kitty didn’t bring us luck.  The officers’ team, No Clue, won.  Since they can’t win prizes, a team was picked at random to get the Seabourn swag today.  It wasn’t us.  Later this evening we have one of my favorite events, Liars Club.  Four staff or entertainers will try to persuade the audience that their totally ridiculous and outrageous definition of four obscure words is the real meaning.  It’s always good for a lot of laughs because some of the Liars are very, very good.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Charleston for most of the day and I’m taking a tour to a plantation that is supposed to have some nice gardens.  I’ve been to Charleston before so I decided to go out of the city instead. 

I'll leave with a trivia question and it's no fair googling or asking Siri.  In which country can you take the shortest commercial airline flight?

October 27 - A Little Bite of the Big Apple

Today we sailed into New York Harbor on a beautiful, sunny autumn day. The last time I sailed into this place my family was returning from six years living in Madrid, Spain.  In other words, a long, long time ago.  I wanted to make sure that I was up to see it, so as usual I didn’t sleep well despite having my alarm set.  The captain told us the night before that we were scheduled to sail under the Verrazzano Bridge at 7:15 AM and by the Statue of Liberty at 7:45 AM.  At 7 AM I went up to the Observation Bar toward the bow of the Quest and there were already plenty of people there, but I found a seat.  There were also Virgin and Bloody Mary’s, Mimosas, and little pastries and mini-bagels with lox.

There’s an outdoor walkway around the Observation Bar and I walked out there a few times but it was freezing cold with a stiff wind as we sailed along.  I was able to take this picture just before the sun popped up and I thought the colors were pretty nice.  I’ve really got a thing for sunrises and sunsets.  I know I’ve  said it before but I can’t help repeating myself.

As the sky brightened in the distance I could see the Verrazzano Bridge through a little morning haze.  Beyond I could just make out the city skyline, still very obscure.  When I sailed in here in 1964 the bridge was under construction but not yet open.  Officially named the Verrazzano-Narrows bridge it connects Brooklyn with Staten Island, two of New York City’s boroughs.  There’s an interesting story (at least to me about the name of the bridge).  It’s named after Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to enter what’s now New York harbor.  When the contract was signed to build the bridge it specified the “Verrazano-Narrows Bridge” with just one “Z.”  (There was controversy about naming it after him with other suggestions being made, but the contract specified the name I just wrote.)  The name Verrazzano has two “z’s” and so in 2018 a bill was passed in New York State to change the name.  As a cost-saving measure old signs with one z would be retained and only new ones would show the corrected spelling.  As someone who wonders about what governments spend time on, I can’t help but speculate on what amount of time and at what cost, the change was made.

A few facts about the bridge to keep them in my mind.  The bridge is a suspension bridge with a central span of 4260 feet between two towers which are nearly 700 feet tall.  The bridge has two decks carrying a total of thirteen lanes of traffic.  Because of the height of the towers and the span between them the designers had to take into account the curvature of the earth; thus the towers are not parallel to each other.  The towers are 1.625 inches further apart at their tops than at their bases.  Okay, that’s more information than a traveler needs to know about the bridge; I just thought it was interesting.

Manhattan really does have a beautiful skyline.

As we passed under the bridge and entered New York Harbor, anticipation  grew because our next sight would be the Statue of Liberty.  As I said it was a practically cloudless sunny day by now and there she was beginning to loom up as we sailed along.  There is something very moving about seeing this grand lady, a symbol of our freedom, standing watch over the gateway for so many people who have come to this country.  My Italian grandfather saw this as a teenage boy arriving from a little village in southern Italy.  My German war bride mother some 65 or so years later saw her as she arrived in a strange country with an infant in her arms (me).  I can’t help but wonder what emotions they must have felt.  I won’t write anything about the Statue because I think all of us have read at least a little about the wonderful gift from France to commemorate our centennial.

Isn't she lovely?

She deserves two shots at least.

In the distance now there was the skyline of Manhattan.  Towering above the other buildings with the sunlight gleaming off its sides is One World Trade Center, also known as the Freedom Tower.  When I last arrived by ship in this harbor, the original World Trade Center hadn’t yet been built  and so I never saw those buildings from the sea; I had only seen them from afar on a couple of land visits to New York or from the air when flying into one of the airports around here.  I decided a couple of days ago that instead of taking a tour to the Statue and Ellis Island, my original plan, that I wanted to take a tour that allowed me to see Ground Zero.  That involved a driving tour of the sights of Manhattan so that’s what I did.

We docked, had a face-to-face encounter with Customs and Border Patrol and then we were off on our short, whirlwind tour.  We had a great guide named Darrell and a fantastic bus driver named Eric.  (As an aside, anyone who is a tour bus driver in NYC in my opinion must be either a saint or certifiable.) Darrell was a very tall black man who could make a living as  a stand-up comic.  We are docked in the Hudson on the West Side of NYC I think around 52nd  Street.  Our drive took us east toward Central Park.  It’s Sunday and a beautiful day so it’s pretty crowded in town.  There’s something else going on here today which makes it even more crowded but I’ll tell you more about that later.  As we drove along Darrell pointed out various notable buildings.  Being in a bus you don’t always get a good view because inevitably everything seems to be on the side you’re not on.  I did get a photo of a famous diner which the guide told us is the last of what used to be many Greek diners in Manhattan and this place called Gray’s Papaya where people go to get great hot dogs of all things.

West Side Diner

Gray's Papaya which Darrell said is a great place to get hot dogs

Speaking of hot dogs ...

I think we were supposed to stop for a little stroll in Central Park, but traffic was very messed up and there was apparently no hope of parking.  We drove by the door in the Dakota apartment building where John Lennon was killed.  We saw the Plaza Hotel which has appeared in so many movies and old ornate mansions which were the homes of the tycoons and industrial barons of the Gilded Age in the early 1900’s. As we drove down Fifth Avenue we passed St. Patrick’s Cathedral and a few blocks later we were able to drive by Trump Tower.  The street in front of that building is lined with big dump trucks to protect from a car bomb or suicide bomber from approaching. I was on the wrong side of the bus so I only got this pretty bad photo of the building, but I’m including it anyway.  

Just to prove I did see it

The Plaza Hotel on the corner of 5th Avenue

Just past Trump Tower we turned on to a side street and got out close to Rockefeller Center.  We had about 45 minutes to walk around and look at the buildings, shops and skating rink all of which have been featured in so many films.  I don’t go to many movies anymore but it was wonderful seeing places from some of my old favorites.  The FAO Schwartz store was right on one corner of the Plaza and who can forget Tom Hanks playing the floor piano in Big.  Rockefeller Center is a complex of 19 commercial buildings built in the 1930’s.  It’s the home of many of the broadcasting companies.  In the limited time I had I walked around and took pictures of some of the artwork on the buildings.  I took the elevator down to the skating rink and watched the skaters enjoying themselves and got a good picture of the gilded statue of Prometheus.  I have to confess that while I enjoyed seeing the sights, I didn’t enjoy the crowds.  I’m too much of a small city woman now.

30 Rockefeller Center

The inscription over the main door.  We could use a little of these I think.

Prometheus himself

FAO Schwartz - Where's Tom Hanks playing the piano?

We headed back west and drove through Times Square and past the Theater District of Broadway.  Did you know that Broadway is the longest street in New York state?  It runs from the southern tip of Manhattan all the way to Albany, the capital of the state.  That’s a bit of trivia to be filed away for the future.  We continued down toward the tip of Manhattan and things got increasingly congested.  As we traveled down 7th Avenue, there were lots of police cars with blue lights flashing and side streets barricaded.  We were approaching Madison Square Garden where Trump was holding a rally tonight.  As we got closer and looked on both sides of the bus, every side street was full of thousands of people as far as we could see wearing red ball caps and carrying Trump signs.  In front of the Garden the area was packed with people wearing MAGA hats waiting to be admitted for the rally later in the day.  I was told that the venue seats about 20,000 and when the tickets to the rally came available they were “sold out” in less than an hour.

A couple of the electronic billboards in Times Squares

These were just a few of the 20,000 who had tickets and were close to the entrance to Madison Square Garden close to 90,000 were outside the perimeter just to be close to the rally.

Proceeding downtown we passed through several well-known neighborhoods, including Greenwich Village, Soho and Tribeca (which stands for Triangle below Canal Street.  We passed Wall Street and the New York Federal Reserve Building.  Eventually we came to a stopping point from which we could walk to Ground Zero in the shadow of the new Freedom Tower.  We had enough time to walk down around the pools that are on the sites of the Twin Towers.  The perimeters have a sort of railing on which are inscribed the names of those who perished in the attack including first responders and passengers on the planes that crashed.  In the center of the pools is a deeper area into which water cascades down.  Around the sidewalks are trees which were planted when the memorial was built except for one that’s fenced in and is a survivor tree, the only tree that made it through the collapse of the buildings.  Across the street is the firehouse of Ladder Co. 10 of the NY Fire Department.  On the wall of that building there is one area that has the names  and photographs of every firemen who was lost, including Stephen Siller whose family founded the Tunnel to Towers Foundation to help families of first responders and service people lost or severely injured.  The rest of the wall is covered with a bronze sculpture showing the firemen working during the efforts to rescue people before the buildings collapsed. The whole place was very moving.  I guess that I like everyone else who was alive that day will never forget the images we saw and the horror of it.

One World Trade Center AKA the Freedom Tower

The North Pool on the spot of the North Tower

The NY Firefighters who died

After we reboarded the bus we headed back toward the pier.  Along the way we passed a place along the river where we could see people just for fun trying to be trapeze artists.  It was some kind of a sports complex with a football field in the building below the trapeze place.  Our driver Eric had to navigate around lots of closed streets which of course caused a lot of congestion on the streets that were open.  We got back to the ship about mid-afternoon after a quick but interesting tour.  It met my expectations because my primary purpose was to see Ground Zero. 

Darrell told us some information which I found quite interesting.  There is an awful lot of vacant office space in Manhattan. Many companies that shut down during Covid or which began working remotely have not returned to  the city. With fewer people coming into the city to work, shops and restaurants have suffered.  More than 6,000 restaurants in NY have not reopened.  The new Freedom Tower is having trouble getting tenants. Businesses are afraid to rent there because they are afraid it would be an obvious target. (I can’t say I really blame them.)  Finally, he told us what the average rent per month for a one-bedroom apartment is and it floored me.   The average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $4250 per month. If you have a car the average cost to park it is $800 per month.

The Quest spent the night in New York, but I stayed onboard because I’m a chicken and didn’t want to wander anywhere at night alone.  We had a marvelous speaker in the evening and actually I wouldn’t have missed him for the world.  He was Walter Isaacson.  He has had a long career in journalism and is the author of a number of biographies of people like Benjamin Franklin, Einstein, and Steve Jobs.  His latest was Elon Musk.  I bought the hardcover book the day it was released (the first time I’d bought an actual paper book in years) and thought it was the most fascinating read. Isaacson was given virtually unfettered access to Musk for close to two years and even did things like go to board meetings with him.  Anyway, it was so interesting listening to him talk about the traits that these very brilliant people share in common and which allow them to “think out of the box.”   Had I known he would be on the ship I would have brought my copy and tried to get him to sign it.  Oh well.  Next time.

October 26 - At sea on our way to New York City

Last night we had a girls’ night in the alternative restaurant Solis.  This place replaced the steakhouse, Thomas Keller Grill, which used to be here.  It has more of a Mediterranean theme and a much more varied menu.  We were six solo women and we had a great time.  We were also international – a Brazilian, a French Canadian, a woman from Washington state, a Southern Californian, a Texan (and that’s a whole other country), and me from the Commonwealth.

The venue has some signature cocktails and we sampled those.  I have no idea what was in the ones I had (a Twiggy and a Brigitte Bardot) but they were awfully good!  Susanna from Brazil and I shared the branzino (sea bass) cooked in a salt crust.  It was absolutely delicious!  For dessert I had something with meringue, whipped cream and raspberries and I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  I don’t usually upload photos of food, but these were just too good not to do so.  We laughed a lot and lingered for nearly three hours.  

This filet is what came out of that salt crust above.  It was yummy!

What's not to love about a dessert like this?

Today we’re sailing off the New England coast and once again the wind is blowing but the seas aren’t very rough.  I slept late and caught up on some emails before going to trivia.  Once again we didn’t win; we missed by 10 points but such is life.  I had lunch with three lovely people from Texas.  It was nice sitting with people who are somewhat like-minded.  Tonight is the Seabourn Club cocktail party followed by our second formal night.  I’m probably going to go the party since it’s the first one.  There will be more along the way and I doubt I’ll make those.  I didn’t go to the first formal night because I was tired after visiting Québec, but I think I’ll make this one.  And that’s about it for today.  Tomorrow I have to get up early to see us sail into New York harbor.  I haven’t done that since I was a teenager.  I’m pretty sure the skyline has changed. 😀

October 25 - Halifax, Nova Scotia

Before I tell you anything about today, I must give you the answers to the trivia question if you haven’t already figured them out.  The three sequences are:  1) Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, 2) Pearl, Coral, Ruby, Sapphire (anniversaries), and 3) Home, Brain, Heart, Courage (things characters in the Wizard of Oz wanted).  100 points if you got them all right!  I also met my new Brazilian friend Susanna and she air-dropped this photo she took of me with Chip the other day.

Today we docked in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the 2nd smallest province of Canada. For some reason I thought it was an island, but it isn’t; it’s actually a peninsula connected by a narrow strip of land, although the province does include some islands.  As with the rest of this part of Canada, the French were the original settlers but for a century fought on and off with the British for control. The matter was finally settled in 1713 following the Peace of Utrecht which ended the War of the Spanish Succession and Britain gained the province.  (Not to wander too far afield but when I think about it, it seems pretty strange that a war over which family would take possession of the Spanish throne would impact provinces in North America which was then the far side of the world.  I think there’s a lesson that can be learned in terms of conflicts between seemingly unrelated belligerents in faraway places which can change the lives of people on the other side of the Earth.)

Anyway, back to Nova Scotia, after Britain prevailed the Acadian French who lived here were also expelled and many wound up in Louisiana.  During our Revolutionary War many Loyalists, loyal to King George III, settled in Nova Scotia. In 1848 Nova Scotia became the first British colony to gain “responsible government,” meaning the provincial parliament had some autonomy and responsibility to the inhabitants.  In 1867 Nova Scotia joined in confederation with New Brunswick, Québec and Ontario to become the Dominion of Canada.  And there is a mini-history of this place.

Some interesting facts about Nova Scotia courtesy of my friend Kathie who lives here.  Nova Scotia has 4700 miles of coastline, 156 light houses and light beacons and no point is further than 42 miles from the ocean. The bays and inlets which account for all the thousands of miles of coastline were formed by glaciers millions of years ago and along the shores the rocks have been worn smooth.  One of the places Nova Scotia is known for is the Bay of Fundy which has the world’s largest tidal shift, 52 feet!  Imagine that; the average tidal shift worldwide is only 3.3 feet.  Time didn’t allow me to go to that Bay but I did make it to Peggy’s Cove, part of St. Margaret’s Bay which also has a significant tide.

When I tendered ashore this morning my friend Kathie, a trivia team member from my last trip, picked me up to take me on a tour.  Kathie has lived in Halifax for 50 years after coming here from British Columbia.  We drove out of the city past two large suspension bridges which connect two sides of Halifax Harbor, one of the largest and deepest ice-free natural harbors in the world.  We quickly passed into  mainly forest land on our way to Peggy’s Cove.  There is an iconic lighthouse there which Kathie wanted me to see.  I like stories and legends so I have to tell the story of how the place got its name.  The less interesting version is that the cove is an inlet of St. Margaret’s Bay and Peggy is a diminutive of that name.  The more romantic one is that a schooner was shipwrecked on Halibut Rock on a point near where the lighthouse now sits.  The only survivor was a young woman named Margaret.  A local fisherman rescued her and she eventually married him.  People soon began calling the place Peggy’s Cove.  A local author has written several novels memorializing the story.

There is a little village near the spit of land and a lighthouse around which an extensive walkway has been cleverly built so it doesn’t diminish the natural beauty and wildness of the rocks around the point; instead, it sort of blends in.  There are warnings all around to be careful to not go off the walkway because large waves are not infrequent and can crash across the rocks and sweep people away.  Today was a cloudy day and the wind was really blowing.  That made it difficult to walk sometimes and it felt very cold despite the temperature being in the 50’s. My hat and gloves bought in Baie-Comeau the other day came in very handy.

The lighthouse at Peggy's Cove

The point and lighthouse at Peggy's Cove. I think the walkway blends in well.

Kathie and me - Do we look cold?

As we drove into the Cove we passed a little white clapboard museum, which was closed, but next to it, carved into the face of one of the large rocks is a monument to the fishermen who live here.  An artist named William deGarthe who was originally from Finland settled in Nova Scotia in the 1930’s and began painting.  His works achieved some success. In the 1960’s he decided to try his hand at sculpture. After trying a variety of mediums, in the late 1970’s he began a 10 year project to sculpt a monument to the local fishermen.  He enlisted the help of one of his students and they began carving a 100 foot long sculpture on a granite outcropping near his home in Peggy’s Cove.  The work was 80% complete when deGarthe died in 1983.  It depicts 32 fishermen, their wives and children and Peggy, the namesake of the Cove, enveloped in the arms of St. Elmo, the patron saint of fishermen.

deGarthe's house that's now a museum

The Fishermen's Monument

From Peggy’s Cove we drove along the shoreline to a monument commemorating the location of the crash of Swissair 111, a flight that went down here in 1998.  Not quite on the scale of the people of Newfoundland who embraced people on planes forced to land on 9/11, the people here took in the family members of the people who perished on the plane when they came while the search was on for survivors (there were none) or personal items to remember their loved ones.

The shoreline near the Swissair memorial.  It's a pretty rugged coast.

As we drove along Kathie pointed out a local lobster business that started when she first came here 50 years ago and now sells lobsters all over the world.  Lobster was so common and cheap that local farmers would feed it to their pigs.  Times have changed.  The shoreline was dotted with little cottages which city people own and spend the summers.  After our drive we headed  back to Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia.

I don’t know what I expected, but Halifax was not at all as I thought it would be.  The city has a population of close to 450,000 and there are quite a few multi-story buildings.  The oldest part of the city is of course around the harbor.  Overlooking that area is Citadel Hill, site of a fort first built back in 1749 by Edward Cornwallis, the governor of Nova Scotia.  (He wasn’t the same Cornwallis we know in Virginia and who surrendered at Yorktown.)  On our driving tour we passed the Commons, which was the area where over the years livestock could be pastured and soldiers could encamp.  We drove by the Public Gardens which must be lovely in spring and summer. The downtown area is a mixture of very old buildings and a few modern glass and steel edifices.  The old ones are now protected and the owners can make whatever changes they like inside but must preserve the exterior.  The street running along the harbor is lined with restaurants, bars and quirky shops.  There’s a promenade running along the waterside.  Unfortunately since we tendered and we left around 3:30 PM I didn’t have an opportunity to do anything other than drive by.  We were originally supposed to dock, but we were relegated to an anchorage because two mega-ships and one a little smaller but much bigger than ours took up all the docks.

The view from Citadel Hill. There used to be a ban on buildings blocking the view of the harbor but that's obviously gone by the wayside.

Boo! Hiss! These guys took our dock space.

It was a brief, but very interesting visit and it was so nice of Kathie to be my guide. It’s always nice to reconnect with friends and to see things from a local’s perspective.  The weather cooperated except for the really blustery wind.  This was our last stop in Canada.  Now we’re on our way to the Big Apple.  We’ve got a day at sea to rest up.