Day 25 - Mon - 08/31/26 - Sydney, Nova Scotia,

 Today is a pretty special day for me.  It's my 81st birthday and a number of things have been pre-planned for this day.  

We didn't set an alarm but felt the thrusters bring the Sapphire Princess into the dock.  A short time later the clearance message was given over the PA system.

While Angela showered, I changed our return flight to an earlier flight. This change was free as our original flight time of 6pm was cancelled and we were moved to an 8pm flight. So I selected a 3:30pm departure from Boston instead of our newly booked 8pm departure.  We also have a late departure scheduled from the ship so this is much better for us.  Later in the day I was also able to order meals for the flight.

We ate our normal breakfast and scanned off of the ship.  We were here last on August 5, 2022 on the Nieuw Statendam, but we never got to see the town.  Angela booked a lunch Princess shore excursion, Mussels & Music which started at 11:15am,  so we only had just under 2 hours to visit the town before lunch but we made a good go of it.  The highlight was visiting a former Baptist church dating back to 1919.  It's now called the United Heritage Church following a series of mergers. There were a number of ladies who volunteered to greet visitors and chat about the history of the church.  The church here is following a similar pattern that we are seeing in the states.  That being said, church congregations are aging out and closures and consolidations are definitely occurring.









While walking down to the church, we came across a fairly major hazardous spill.  It seems that a delivery truck had lost part of its load of pallets of bleach.  There was a large response by the local fire department and the reloading and the cleanup was in progress along with the closure of the intersection.

After visiting the church, we wandered back to the port area with a stop at a drug store to purchase a shaver refill for a shaver I bought here 4 years ago that I really like. Checkout was backed up so we elected to pass and possibly return after the music lunch.  We paid a quick stop at the St. George Anglican Church which dated back to 1785.  It, too, no longer has services and has merged with another Anglican Church not far away.

The Music & Mussels shore excursion turned out to be wonderful.  Buddy Macdonald, a local guitarist and singer, sang and told local stories while we enjoyed mussels and chips along with 2 craft beers and 2 ciders.  I liked the pale beer and the apple cider, while the bitter beer and cranberry cider didn't thrill my palate.


After the scrumptious lunch we headed back out to tour the town with the remaining few hours we had available.  We found a Tim Horton's and purchased some TimBits before making our way back to the drug store to purchased the shaver and refills. We shopped and took photos and made our way back to the port area where there was an interior craft market to be toured before reboarding the Sapphire Princess.

Once on board, I watched the letting go of the lines in the stern area and soon the ship's thrusters moved the ship to port to line up with the channel and we headed out to sea on our way to our final port stop of Halifax.

It was a formal night and we had made 5pm reservations at Makoto Ocean for my birthday.  We both ordered the set menu to be able to enjoy a wide variety of sushi along with Miso soup and Japanese ice cream. It was simply wonderful.  The food was well prepared and served on unique dishware.  At the end, the servers serenaded me with a Happy Birthday that other guests joined in on.  Yvonne and Gordon, Angela's friends from karaoke also came over to congratulate me.  After dinner I chatted with them and found out Yvonne is a CPA also.

The evening entertainment was the final cast show Bravo which featured Broadway and movie show tunes.  I watched a comedian, Carl Strong, in the Explorer's Lounge and he was really funny.  I ended my day participating in an Improv session in Club Fusion which was quite fun.

It was a really good day.  Tomorrow we are in Halifax.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day -3 & -2 - Tue-Wed - 08/04-05/26 Seattle to Copengagen

Image
We were packed and ready for our departure well before our Pastor picked us up at 11:45am to take us to the airport which is only a few minutes away.     He dropped us off at noon and it took around 30 minutes to wait in line to check in.     My electronic boarding pass said we would be departing from gate S-15.     So we found the TSA checkpoint nearby and waited another 15 minutes before boarding the train to the S terminal where we normally depart from.     Arriving there we saw no departures for our flight and the electronic message board said our gate was A10.     So we re-boarded the train which took us back to the A gates and we were there just after 1pm for a 1:35pm starting boarding time.     Boarding was by group and went relatively smooth, but since we were in group 5 much of the overhead luggage space was taken.     The space over our seats was used for emergency supplies, but I found some nearby space. ...
Read more

Day 01 - Fri - 08/07/26- Embarkation Day

Image
 After a reasonable night's sleep, we woke up around 8am and prepared for embarkation day.  First up was a second visit to the hotel's wonderful breakfast buffet.  We really enjoyed it once again.  We then tried to learn where the bus pickup point was.  The front desk clerk didn't seem to know.  We walked around outside and found a bus stop for the regular city bus route and thought that would be the best way to the port which was about 2km or 1.2 miles away. We retuned to our room and finished repacking and around 10:15am decided to check out and head for the ship.  A second clerk knew exactly where the pickup point was and that was comforting.  We made our way there (about 100 yards north of the end of the light rail station.  There was a temporary sign there and a line of people waiting.  A #25 bus shortly arrived and we were whisked to Terminal #1.  Arriving there it was a short walk to the luggage drop off point.  We then ...
Read more

Day -1 - Thu - 08/06/26- Exploring Copengagen

Image
 We both had a good night's rest and woke up refreshed.  Our room rate includes complementary breakfast so we prepped for our day.  We couldn't get the room safe to open so after breakfast we stopped by the front desk to arrange for a repair.  The breakfast buffet was the best we've ever experienced with a wide selection of fruits, cheeses, meats, bread and pastries, drinks.   We returned to the room and a couple young men came up to open our safe and they, too, could get the door open.  Finally, one of them used a small pry tool and the door swung open.  They didn't have parts to fix it, so they went down to their workshop and were back in 10 minutes with a spring that brought the safe back to life.  With that item fixed, we headed off to the light rail station a few blocks away where a helpful employee aided me in downloading the app to more easily travel on the train.  Trains run every 5 minutes and soon we were under way to the Central St...
Read more