Catlover54

Last night we heard thunder. But this morning, all is well, at least for now, and though I cannot see the port from our hotel window, online I found the Quest is indeed in the harbor. Early morning view from our suite over part of the town:

Right next to the market is SAQ, a wine and spirits store where you can get good quality wines to bring on board (allowed on SB), in anticipation of the included wine not always being the greatest.

We booked a tour offered on Viatar via Tri* Adviso*. Ours was called "Private walking tour of Old Port", (guide was Elise but they might not send her). You can book private, group, half-day or full day tours to your interest (walking, driving, just in town or also going out of town, food or architecture focused, even a Jewish food and history tour). I had come close to booking with Tours by Locals, but their "Local" first claimed she could not promise a car three months in advance, then raised the price, and was generally acting unreliable, so we bailed without cost.

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The basilica is beautiful and well-maintained

Mount Royal, the highest point in twon (buildings are not allowed to be built higher)

A former bank, now Crew Cafe Regent in Harbor with Habitat 67 on top Great Farmers Market (closes at 6) Overview of port area.

Bank, energy, and insurance buildings with art deco construction . And yet somehow a chunk of the Berlin wall managed to get inserted into an upscale shopping mall. The black tumorous like attachment to the grey skyscraper is the bank's vault. Mohlson building (origina) The birds sit on electric wires in the energy building

Typical Montreal neighborhood boulevards Bank of Montreal, opulent Art Deco with panels commemorating WWI and WWII casualties on walls Francophone (looking with contempt at Scottish bank) Anglophone (looking with contempt at French Catholic church) their dogs just look at each other elaborate piggy bank from the 1800's

Montreal has abundant outdoor public art:

Though our drive to the market was less than 4 miles, due to traffic and construction, it took our Uber over a half hour to get there. Our elderly Uber driver from Viet Nam was bored so he started chatting, as the neighborhoods we traversed got seedier and increasingly decorated with grafitti of varying quality. He sadly asserted "100% of the Natives on the street are alcoholics and drug users" (as we passed one sitting on the sidewalk with hand extended, with oddly manicured fingers and blue nail polish). He claimed he has been here 30 years, and his income, local and sales taxes are too high, and his social security monthly payment is too low ($1700 Canadian), so he still has to work to make ends meet, though he is over 70. We nibbled on all of the goodies while sequentially working on our less than ideal monitored Emed covid screening. It only took an hour and a half (the first proctor was apparently dyslexic and transposed my month and year of birth and refused to let us go forward ; when we called back, having confirmed we were right and she was wrong, all was well until we tried to get the pdf for our covid results and got error messages; turned out we had to transpose my birthdate day and month, i.e., create a falsehood, to make it readable). And so the senseless comedy continued. The next day we went to the Basilica to hear a 50-minute organ concert, which started with the theme from 2001 Space Odyssey and ended with Bach's Tocatta and Fugue in D minor. A vigorous and scenic walk on Mt. Royal, followed by dinner at Brasserie 701 (the best mushroom ravioli I have ever had, though the service was spotty and we could not hear each other), completed the day. Meanwhile we had two more Uber drivers, an African immigrant playing cello concertos on his car stereo, and an Armenian Lebanese refugee here for the last 20 years because he was tired of listening to explosions in Beirut. We feel fortunate to be boarding the Quest, regardless of what problems we may encounter.

We are too early for exploring fall colors, so after settling into our complementary upgraded hotel suite on the 19th floor of a chain hotel in downtown, with stellar views, we started our reexploration of the town (not my first time here) with lunch at a traditional French bistro, Modavie. There I had escragots and my coveted boudin noir with apples, bacon, and mashed potatoes, accompanied by a French pinot noir. Then came a private guided walking tour of the old town, with our guide showing us a lot of the old Art Deco buildings inside and out. View spots revealed a Regent ship simultaneously in port and near where we will embark soon. In the background, the dark outlines of the Habitat 67 condos revealed themselves (I had first sailed by them in 1975 when they were all the modern rage, on the Stephan Battory, a Polish basic transport ship from Montreal to Europe). The guide said some of her tour guests have asked what those "ruins in the distance " are (million dollar ruins). Then it was time to buy dinner supplies at the farmer's market in Little Italy (Marche Jean Talon). We secured fine wines at the wine shop SAQ, where a very knowledgable assistant voluntarily helped us select exactly what we wanted (if only he would be a somm on the Quest). Our haul included a baguette, berliners/beigners (plum and apricot), a chocolate eclair with real cream for DH, a cream cake for me, misc. decadent cheeses, kolbasa, caramel cake, and finally some old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies for DH.

Well, it will be live tomorrow. We have to use up the SB points we acquired after being unceremeniously booted off the Encore when Covid hit March 2020, and this part of Canada had been on our bucket list for a while, so here we are. The cruise (assuming Hurricane Fiona does not sidetrack us), will be 12 days, including ports Montreal, Havre-St. Pierre,L'Anse aux Meadows, St. Johns, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Cap-aux-Miquelons, Quebec City, Trois-Rivieres, back to Montreal. Meanwhile we have enjoyed three nights of pre-cruise Montreal, a lovely, relatively safe pre-cruise city with mostly friendly shop and restaurant personnel, excellent dining options, and easy places to walk. It is a lot like France, sans the attitude. I would like to encourage anyone else on this cruise to not be shy and please also chime in with thoughts and comments as the cruise goes along.

The Venetians long ago decided they no longer need visitors to stimulate their economy, as they are well-fed enough, housed, have utilities, and social welfare retirement funds. Good enough. Cruisors have gotten the message to stay away -- so we will!

We just wasted 1.5 hours of life each doing Emed for a cruise going out of Canada. First we had to reregister each of our accounts because it had been a few months since we used Emed (and the last time we tired, we got an application error so I'd had to hunt down a foreign pharmacy open on a Sunday that would do it, very inconvenient), apparently Navica just deletes old passwords after a few months.Then the gal in Fili who answered our call transposed my month and year of birth (likely due to dyslexia) and declared my attempt at a test ineligible because my ID did not match what they had on file and told me to edit my birthdate and call back. After reaffirming my birthdate was correct, and not in need of editing, we called back, and the new gal in India proceded with the test, which was completed as negative, but then when the certificate was sent online I could not get the pdf with results to open using the birthdate as password because the system had apparently again transposed the month and year of birth (so on a guess we entered the likely transposition, and it worked). . DH also had to set up a brand new account, and got dumped off several times. Finally, we have our e-results. What a waste of time and money. We already knew we were negative (or as negative as you can be) from self-testing for this cold virus, on top of lack of symptoms. At least we no longer need a test to get back to the U.S. post-cruise (we'll see how long that pleasantry lasts).

DH and I completed two 7-day back to back cruises on the Seabourn (SB) Odyssey, 12/22/18-12/29/18 and 12/29/18-1/5/19, Caribbean in depth’. The food, beverages and service offered were very good overall ( I gained 7 lb), though service was definitely not perfect. Overall we enjoyed our trip, especially the food, the entertainment, and the great AC. I give it four out of five stars, with the deduction for periodic service and communication issues, mediocre enrichment lectures, mediocre to bad (for this day and age) internet and interactive TV services, and the closed MDR at breakfast and lunch, which necessitated standing in buffet lines at lunch if on board ( though lines were short) and scurrying around to find seating unassisted. The Saturday Philipsburg/ St Martin disembarkation experience was also suboptimal, and our ten-hour SXM airport experience on a Saturday was uncomfortably loud and generally horrible (aggravated by constant, very loud 93 decibel announcements). I cannot blame SB for SXM airport problems but I would be hesitant to book another cruise on SB or any other line requiring disembarkation in SXM. Ports visited the first half included Philipsburg (embarkation on St. Martin island), Saint Kitts and Nevis with Carambola Beache caviar in the surf, Road Bay, Anguilla; St. Johns, Antigua and Barbuda; Terre-de-Haut, Iles des Saintes; Port Elizabeth, Bequoia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Castries, St /Lucia, and finally Bridgetown, Barbados. The second half was to include Saline Baby, Mayreau but sea swells prevented tendering). We also stopped at Roseau, Dominica; Basse-Terre, Guadaloupe; Gustavia, Saint Barthelemy; and Great Harbour, Jost van Dyke, and ended back in Philipsburg. Captain: Othello Ghoshroy (a man of few words) Cruise Director: Robert Brendan (lively, friendly, he also sings) Executive Chef: Marco Matteucci (excellent!) Hotel Director: Peppi Schuppler ( who tried to be helpful, even personally served me a pina colada New Years Eve when bartenders were busy)