Cruise continued: Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia

One schoolwork option from Travelin'Oma today was timely for me: take photos from a recent trip and put them into a collage, or scrapbook. Here's my blog scrapbook with our meager photos for days 3 and 4 of our cruise...

Remember how I mentioned the law of diminishing photographs on our trips? Here we go with fewer and fewer shots of the cruise.

Monday Oct 5: we stopped in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Halifax has had some very interesting events happen there, and it was fun for me to learn more about it. I had no idea that Halifax had such a rich maritime history. Here are a couple of things I learned about Halifax:

1. Halifax was one of the first to respond to the Titanic. It sent out rescuers immediately. Several of the Titanic victims are buried in Halifax.

2. Halifax Harbor had a gigantic explosion on December 6, 1917. The SS Mont-blanc was loaded with war munitions, and it collided with a Norwegian ship in the harbor. A huge section of the town was decimated. About 2000 people died, and over 9000 were injured. Boston was one of the first cities to respond and send help. Several people came from Boston and stayed for several months, helping in the rebuilding of the town. To this day, Halifax sends an enormous Christmas tree to Boston every year in thanks. The lucky person whose tree is chosen travels to Boston with the group who gives the tree. You can learn more about this explosion here.

3. Halifax is home to one of the only (perhaps the only)remaining Corvettes. Not the car, the ship that was used to escort fleets across the Atlantic during the war. At one time there were about 250 of them. We toured the HMCS Sackville. It is set up like a museum, so we could see the various quarters for the crew and officers. Tight quarters. A career in the navy is not for one with claustrophobia.

Diane and Ray on a gun turret of the HMCS Sackville.

Ray and Diane in the Halifax Maritime Museum - next to the Madeleine

4. Halifax has a crystal works - when Waterford Crystal closed, many of its glass blowers came to Halifax. We spent a long time watching them blow glass that would later become beautiful bowls. It was fascinating. Marsha got lots of pictures. We got none. If you want to see what they produce, you can look here.

Tuesday we docked in Sydney, Nova Scotia. At the port entry there is a giant fiddle. Go figure. We never figured out why it was there, but we did find out it was commissioned especially for the port entry. Hmmm. You can see that it's taller than the two story building behind it.

Welcome to Sydney

A lovely shot of the deck of the ship, and a miniscule shot of Diane. Not unlike a "Where's Waldo" illustration.

There you have it. All of our pictures of Sydney.

We did wander around the city a bit. Marsha, Tamara and I ended up at a small Anglican church not very far from the harbor. It turns out that it was the garrison church for the island, so when any royalty visited, that's where they attended church. We sat where Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and the Queen Mum have sat. We saw the chair donated by Lord Nelson so that there would be an appropriate chair there for visiting church dignitaries. The lovely woman who told us about the church pointed out their very tiny pipe organ. She told us where it was made. She told us it was a baby version of the big pipe organ in Salt Lake City, Utah. By any chance had we heard of that organ? Yes, we told her, we knew of that organ. Had we ever seen it? Yes, we had all seen it. Talk about understated. She invited us to play the little organ. I thought to myself that I'll never get a chance to play the Tabernacle Organ, so I should jump at the chance to play its little miniature (very miniature) version. I played it! It was too bad my kids weren't there - they really know how to play it. Marsha took a video of me playing it, and some photos. I did not have my camera with me.

Each night Ray and I took advantage of the Thermal Spa on board the ship. They had these lounge chairs that were heated:

We relaxed on those lounge chairs and read. Then we hopped into the hot tub and relaxed for awhile. After the hot tub we got into the "massage showers". Talk about luxury.

Every night we relaxed there - it was the perfect end to every day.