Introduction
This was my 2nd ever cruise; my first was with NCL around the Hawaiian islands. That was about ~7 years ago; I don’t remember much about it, but I do remember it was extremely rocky. I still remember trying to walk back to my cabin after dinner and was rocking back and forth in the hallways. Other than that, I don’t remember too much about the cruise experience, which means it was probably fine.
Anyway, the in-laws wanted to do this Boston to Quebec City cruise in October. I guess the reason was to see the fall leaves. I had never been to the Northeast before, so I was more excited for all the lobsters I’d be eating.
Bar Harbor
We took a 1 hour trip up to the mountain to see the views. After that, we got back into the village near the cruise terminal for lunch. This is where I had a nice 2 pound lobster. It was delicious! After that, we walked for a bit before hopping back on the boat at around ~4PM since it was cold and rainy. The highlight was this nice 2 lb Maine lobster that ran me about ~$40.
Halifax
The biggest city on the cruise. We got out of the cruise terminal and hired a taxi to take us to Peggy’s Cover and the Titanic memorial. He charged us $200 CAD for the ~5 hour trip. That was cheaper than booking an excursion for 4.
Sydney
It was a nice day the day we went. It’s a small city with about 2 main streets. We walked all of it, had lunch and then stayed at the cruise terminal since it had free WIFI.
Charlottetown
This stop was cancelled due to the heavy winds. We then spent 2 days at sea getting to Saguenay.
Saguenay
Another small city. We took the hop-on-hop-off bus tour to downtown to see some sights and eat lunch. It was very cold that day (around 30-40 degrees.)
Quebec City
The old town was small and charming (think a small European town. The cruise ended here at around 10am, and we flew out at 2pm the next day.
Cruise itself
First off, it was COLD and rainy most of the time. Thus, you didn’t want to spend any time outside on the cruise ship, so no pool although I did see some people in the hot tubs. But that’s our fault for picking a NE cruise in October. The average age on the cruise was about 60. The buffet food was worse than Old Country Buffet, and I actually like Old Country Buffet. Everything just seemed too salty (do you lose your taste buds as you get older?) My other big gripe was the amount of time it took for dinner. The waits for the restaurants weren’t bad; maybe 5-10 minutes. However, once you got seated, it would take 1.5-2 hours for every meal (no exaggeration.) There were just too many seats for the size of the kitchen I assumed, but one day, we stopped in for only dessert at 9PM, and that took about 20 minutes to come out after having placed the order. You’d think dessert would be pre-made and it’d be fast, but that was slow too.
Do I recommend this specific cruise – no, not really. Do I recommend cruises in general? At this point in my life, I’d say NO. Maybe when I’m older and want more structure in my travel, then yes.