East Coast Cruise: Baltimore, Boston, Maine, Canada

Day 0:  The Flight

The Summer Fall Foliage 2018 trip began uneventfully with our first 5 person plane flight.  For fun, we did a red eye, leaving LA at 9:30 and landing around 5:30 am in Baltimore.

Upon arrival to our hotel, we found 12 police officers ready to storm the building, but since they were not concerned with our floor, we checked in and slept for a few hours.

Day 1ish

We trudged over from our hotel across the harbor to the Aquarium.  First,we made a quick stop for "breakfast" at Dunkin Donuts.  The Baltimore aquarium is really quite fantastic.  It's in 3 buildings on the pier, but the main tower is a continuous spiral up several levels, and a ramp back down, so you are always walking through an exhibit.  The aquarium had many natural scenes, such as regional or local waterways, instead of the traditional bright tropical fish look, that many have.  There were many ugly, 50 lb river fish, which was unique.  The best was, of course, the pig nose turtle, but the kids (and me) also enjoyed the long-necked turtle, the octopus, the giant fish, electric eel, and the dolphin show.  

For lunch, we cruised over to what would, sadly, be our only Chipotle visit of the trip.

After the aquarium, I raced to the hotel for a phone call with Gary Keller!!!!!!!

In the evening we walked along the waterfront, had a excellent dinner at whole foods, hit Vacarros for some canolis and dragged the poor kids home.  Canolis...not that good IMHO.

Day 1 v. 2.0

In the morning we walked along the water front and Beth, Becca, and Hannah did a Dragon Boat.  Princess Leah and I walked 12 feet and wound up drenched in sweat.  Becca, Hannah and I toured the submarine USS Torsk and USS Constellation antique warship.   The Constellation had 3 large decks, and gave us a good view of a ship.  The girls found the captain's bathroom unacceptable, so I didn't even show them the crew bathrooms.  After this we took a short Uber ride to the Cruise ship.

Cruise Ship Review:  Royal Caribbean's Grandeur of the Sea

A smaller boat by current standards, and one of the smaller ships in the RC fleet.  Its a 2,300 passenger boat, with about 400 kids on this voyage.  The boat has one two-floor dining room, one buffet, and no tv commercial-worthy amenities, except for the rock wall.  The boat and rooms are worn, but it operates extremely efficiently, and we had almost no wait for disembarkation (even with 1 tender) or food.  All of the food service had vegetarian options clearly marked.  They even had a kid's club for infants, but, Leah opted to remain with us instead.  The kids loved the kid's club and made friends with two girls who were much older than them, at the end of the trip.  We played Bingo twice, went swimming a few times, enjoyed running in the halls, which is definitely allowed, did hair for about 90 minutes per day and crushed the ipad batteries.  

First night - we met our dinner mates - two retired couples who admirably pretended to enjoy formal dinner with children.

Day 2:  Sea day of some kind.

Day 3 - Boston

So excited to see Boston today, and, excited for a full day.  The cruise has a 12 hour stop!!!  As we board the busses a light rain falls ominously.  When we arrived in downtown Boston, it was in the middle of the kind of rains a place gets in the bible if it had been naughty. 

We returned to the bus, where Kate Mercke replacement, Erica Mercke brought us a bucket of "coffee" and took Beth to run errands.  Thanks, Erica!

We realized the rain had stopped, and we were able to squeak out a nice day in Boston.  From the downtown area, we walked the Freedom trail, and Becca saw a cemetery, which she enjoyed more than you may expect.  She asked about 46 insightful questions about the goings on.  For the rest of the trip, we noted many cemeteries together.  After that, we hit Fanueil Hall, which sounds fancy, but is just a crappy mall food court.  You heard me.  Overrated!  We got ice cream or cookies or some garbage and continued our walk to the really exceptional Boston Commons Park.  Playground, duck pond, fake duck line, grassy areas, no bathrooms, $4 water.  You've seen a park, here are some pics.  Tight on time we rushed back to the bus and the boat. 

Day 4:  Portland, MAINE

Maine was a great place to visit.  Nothing uniquely outstanding, but the whole place is just really nice.  We took a one hour bus tour of the "downtown" and got dropped off at the harbor.  From there, a challenging uphill hike/stroller push to a tower of some kind that is really important in Portland and well anyways, here are some pictures. 

Whole Foods for lunch.  Man, Whole Foods Portland was awesome.  Really glad we went there.  It's one of those suburban oversized ones.  

Back to the harbor for a really incredible boat tour.  The harbor is full of incredible little islands.  Some inhabited, some haunted, many both.  The coastline is just so different from LA.  The waters are full of boats and lobster traps (and probably not that many lobsters).  In town, Portland makes a ton of beer, because the other 364 days of the year are snowy, apparently.  Nice place.  Home of Allagash beer, and 46 other types. 

Day 5:  Bar Harbor, or as annoying t-shirts say:  Bah Hah-bah.  Get it?  They talk funny here.

Tender port.  We had the "fortune?" of having super armed coast guard escrow our boat and tenders through the harbor.  Someone got some federal grant money and is not afraid to waste it.  Drain that swamp!  If you think a coast guard boat with 4 person crew and machine gun is unnecessary for a sleepy village in Maine, don't worry, they had 2 for us!

Bar Harbor is the home of Acadia National park.  A really good national park, with, get this - the highest mountain within 50 miles of the Eastern seaboard until you get to Brazil.  So, I have been on the highest mountain within 50 miles of the Eastern seaboard before you hit Brazil, and you, probably have not.  So, think about that for a few minutes and then we shall move on.  Just to be fair, the height is 1,529 feet, which is less than Freedom Tower (1776), but taller than Trump Tower (surprisingly tiny).

Bar Harbor does not have a Starbucks. 

It does have a sand bar that is walk able during low tide, but not during high tide.  There are many warning signs with photos of floating cars.  We walked across it, although with 3 children, you really need to watch the tides.  The bar leads to a nifty little island, that you'd best sprint around if you want to see your family again, before tides erase your escape route. 

We took a 2 hour bus ride around the park with two cool stops.  Definitely worth a return trip.  Here are some pics:

On the way back we had a much needed mid-day drink, and a less needed, but enjoyed, ice cream at the park.  Back on the boat, with full military escort.  I was surprised they did not have jets patrolling they 1/2 mile route of rural Maine.

Day 6:  Saint John, Newsomething Orother, Canada

Canada.  Nice people, no Chipotles, not sure what the point is.   

This part of Canada has the largest tidal variation of any spot on earth - that is the difference from high to low tide.  Our ship went up (or down, its not a big deal) 2 full floors in the 6 hours we were there.  We took the big pink bus tour around Saint John.  Its a hop on, hop off, but everyone goes to one spot- the Reversing Rapids, where something cool happens with the river and that tide thing I mentioned.  We got there when it was "even" which is really cool, because then it looks normal and you don't see anything.  On the way back we went to the local market and Beth won a free coffee because she bought a POUND of beans.  What in the holyfuck, Canada, are you using the IMPERIAL system now?  The guy could not even tell me how many Kilos of coffee we just bought.  I like buying things in kilos because I feel like Pablo Escobar in Narcos.  We also bought every last item that had a drop or more of maple syrup, and as of this writing two weeks later have not used any of it.

On the way back we had a Beaver Tail, which is essentially a personal pizza sized piece of dough, lightly fried and doused in sugar of some kind.  For some reason, we needed two. I ate most of one of them to protect my children from the 400 grams (see, Metric) of sugar each serving likely contained.

Back to the boat, dinner with people who wished they had my time dining, and partying all night long (Watched the whole season of Orange is the New Black.  Don't love the new characters at all.  Badison?  Seriously?)

Day 7 or So - Halifax

No tour for us here, just two exhausted children, Princess Leah, Beth and a stroller not designed for heavy walking.  We were going to hit the town.  Halifax has a killer ~2 mile (1.2kilometre) boardwalk with a great view, no safety rails and lots to do.  We first went through town.  The kids and I got a Timmy Horton's diet coke and sandwich.  It was exactly what you would expect fast food bagels and soda to be.  Beth, ever the adventurer, got Le Starbucks.  Nice job, Beth.

From there we walked up a steep hill to the park.  A small central park, but it had some really kick-ass roses and some ducks.  We fed the ducks with some kindly villagers we encountered.  There were three girls, we have three girls.  Girls played, daddy made some calls.  Side note:  T-Mobile -your international data and phone service is absolute dog crap.  Bring back Catherine Zeta-Jones or pink girl.

After that, we walked over to the fort, which Becca has repeatedly insisted was her favorite part of the entire trip.  They even had a authentic looking, but not authentic to the site, recreation of French and Belgian WWI trenches (yes, there are differences)  Becca described them to the re-enactor as "a lot of fun to play in."  So that was probably my bad.  After that, more phone calls, and we had local pizza.  From there we walk to the boardwalk and spend about 2 hours wandering back.  And that's basically it.  Two sea days that kind of run together, a relatively easy flight back and now we're home.

Overall, relatively relaxing trip, lots to see, but nothing specific.  Would definitely cruise back here, and would definitely come back for a week or two.