Carinval Glory - NYC to New England... A Memoir

[pe4all]

among the 6 of you' date=' would be 700 views each. That's kind of insane, don't you think? I love reading too (not really), but 700 views per person?

< more "the girl from Ipanema" hold music >[/quote']

I'm holding up my end of the 700 views pp! I must drop in here a couple of times an hour, X 4 days - yep, I'm guilty!

Edited July 17, 2011 by pe4all

[nybumpkin]

I'm holding up my end of the 700 views pp! I must drop in here a couple of times an hour, X 4 days - yep, I'm guilty!

I'm guilty too! This is a great review. I just didn't post before....:o

[PalmettoNative]

I just noticed that this thread is up to almost 4700 views in 4 days! I'm amazed! That's incredible! I figure, there's about 6 of you actually reading it, and 500 people that clicked on it and decided not to read it because of how long it was. That means that the remaining 4200 views [quick math in head] among the 6 of you, would be 700 views each. That's kind of insane, don't you think? I love reading too (not really), but 700 views per person?

 

Secretly I know that you and your wife are forever clicking on the thread to increase your view count. Nice job...:D

[ShakyBeef]

Secretly I know that you and your wife are forever clicking on the thread to increase your view count. Nice job...:D

 

 

Dang-it, Delta, they're onto us.:cool:

[Ilive2cruise]

I just noticed that this thread is up to almost 4700 views in 4 days! I'm amazed! That's incredible! I figure, there's about 6 of you actually reading it, and 500 people that clicked on it and decided not to read it because of how long it was. That means that the remaining 4200 views [quick math in head] among the 6 of you, would be 700 views each. That's kind of insane, don't you think? I love reading too (not really), but 700 views per person?

 

Well, anyway, I'm really flattered by the 6 of you that are actually reading this. Ok, I'll go upstairs and start writing again, right after I squeak-squeak my hands and get some breakfast.

 

< more "the girl from Ipanema" hold music >

 

well, I've been "away" for two days but now I'm back so your numbers should iincrease with my 700 views! yes, I did go through "memoir withdrawal" type symptoms but feeling better now that I am all caught up! Please keep it comin'!!

[Delta Hotel]

We head back to the room to pick up stuff. We enter the cabin and notice that “our neighbors” [to be read out loud with teeth mashed together tightly] are in their cabin, apparently trying to tear the room apart looking for something. I’m guessing that some crew member told them that there was buried gold or bacon inside the cabin somewhere, and they were trying to find it. Random objects being thrown, yelling, kicking of walls, screaming children, screaming parents… you get the picture. We roll our eyes, and don’t bother calling because it’s daytime, and we’re leaving anyway.

 

We pick up cash, passports, stuff, drop off stuff, change socks, potty the kids, wash hands (squeak squeak), and then head to the gangway to debark and begin our exploration of another country.

 

I haven’t been to many foreign countries, so I still get excited when traveling anywhere that qualifies as “another country”. On our Alaska cruise, our last stop before coming back to Seattle was Victoria, British Columbia. We got off of the ship and walked into the Canadian Customs terminal. I had my passport out and ready. As we walked into the large cavernous building, there were no lines, no customs agents, no check-in or anything like it. Everyone just walks through the building from one side to another. About half way through the building, we see two people in uniform standing at a desk. I assumed these were Canadian Customs agents, so I start to walk toward them; I wanted a stamp on my passport.

 

As I approached them, they saw me coming and both turned and went into a door just a few feet away. I stopped, slowly lowered my hand with the passport in it, and had a little pity-myself moment. All I wanted was a stamp on my passport. I was willing to answer whatever questions they had for me, and to provide the identification and papers they needed to give me the stamp – but that didn’t happen. I was prepared for anything except a hard math question. I’m normally pretty good at math, but the higher-level stuff has faded from memory… I haven’t used any of that higher math since college. That was 15 years ago!

 

Another side note. When Wifey and I came back from one of our Carnival Cruises a year or so ago, we received an email from Carnival with a survey about our cruise. It said that if we completed the survey, we’d be entered into a drawing for a free cruise or something. Wifey decided to read the contest rules, and found this little jewel of a clause deep inside the contract regarding Canadian residents:

 

Drawing and Skill-Testing Question for Canadian Residents: If selected entrant is a Canadian resident, in order to win the Prize, the selected entrant must first correctly answer unaided a time-limited, mathematical skill-testing question by telephone at a predetermined mutually agreeable time. In the event that the selected entrant is unable to correctly answer the skill-testing question, the Sponsor shall have the right to randomly draw another eligible entrant, and the Sponsor shall be fully and completely released and discharged from any liability or responsibility in this regard. By entering, entrants agree that the Sponsor’s decisions are final and binding in all regards with respect to the Drawing.

 

 

In case you don’t believe me, I mean, why would you? Here’s a link to the Carnival contract page:

http://medallia.com/sweepstakes/carnival/rules/

 

I was so amused by this, that Wifey and I looked into why this strange math question is required for Canadian residents. From my limited searching, it seems that in order for Canadian residents to participate in (or win) a sweepstakes or any kind of contest internationally, the “skills test” component must be added so that it’s no longer an “illegal lottery”.

 

A website I found says this about the Canadian “skills test”:

 

Canadian sweepstakes law, unlike American law, requires that the third component, "winners are chosen by luck," is removed. Sponsors cannot use pure luck to determine who wins a sweepstake. There must be at least some element of skill involved.

 

To my little brain, this sounds a lot like “Canadians don’t like luck.” I like Canadians… nothing against them at all. They’re friendly, and keep a clean country. Is it just the government that doesn’t like luck? Or is this common among the residents, as well? If you go to the store in Canada, can you buy regular dice? Or do they have six sides with the same number of dots [predetermined by law] on every side?

 

So, back to Halifax. We pack up our stuff, and head out to the gangway. We take the stroller for the 5-year-old because her little legs have a hard time keeping up with big-people legs, remember, she’s 5 years old, but is still the size of a 3-year-old. Not only that, the stroller is a really convenient thing to have for placing shopping bags, drinks, hats, coats, jackets, and children when you don’t want to hold them. I think we might keep bringing the stroller with us after the kids are grown up – then THEY can push the stroller, and we’ll put our crap on it. Another perfectly refined system.

 

We go through the checkout line at the ship’s door and “bing” our Sail & Sign cards. “BING” for me, then I wait on the other side. “BING” for Wifey, “BING” for Daughter #1, and “BING” for Daughter #2. We all head down the gangway. We enter the Port Terminal. Inside the port terminal, there’s a ship’s photographer ready to take your picture with a person in a moose costume. The moose costume is more like Bullwinkle, rather than a real moose. It didn’t look like a real moose at all.

 

I shove the girls over to the moose for the picture, fully knowing that I’m not buying that picture, but I had my camera strapped around my neck, hanging just above belt-level. I place one hand on the camera, flick the ON/OFF button into the ON position, aim the lens at the kids and moose, then snap three quick pictures from just beside the photographer. My camera takes pictures at a rate of 7 photos per second, so 3 pictures is really just half-a-second, so I don’t think anyone noticed.

 

 

[NeuroQueen]

Following along from the beginning! Loved the stroller story. We miss the stroller since the kids are too big. We actually had to carry our crap! So we got a dog and bought him a stroller (we refrained from buying numerous outfits for the dog...didn't want people to think we were a celebrities) and now the dog walks and we can push the stroller with all of the crap! After long sessions with the doggy trainer he still can't push the stroller! Loving your review. Have you ever checked out SailorJack on the RCI boards? He writes like you do....the story about the camel....not to be missed! Keep going as I have to work tomorrow!!!

[Delta Hotel]

Following along from the beginning! Loved the stroller story. We miss the stroller since the kids are too big. We actually had to carry our crap! So we got a dog and bought him a stroller (we refrained from buying numerous outfits for the dog...didn't want people to think we were a celebrities) and now the dog walks and we can push the stroller with all of the crap! After long sessions with the doggy trainer he still can't push the stroller! Loving your review. Have you ever checked out SailorJack on the RCI boards? He writes like you do....the story about the camel....not to be missed! Keep going as I have to work tomorrow!!!

 

Glad you're enjoying the memoir. If it's too late to return the stroller, you should get a new dog. No, I didn't know about SailorJack, but no thanks... I don't read.

[cv322]

I just noticed that this thread is up to almost 4700 views in 4 days! I'm amazed! That's incredible! I figure, there's about 6 of you actually reading it, and 500 people that clicked on it and decided not to read it because of how long it was. That means that the remaining 4200 views [quick math in head] among the 6 of you, would be 700 views each. That's kind of insane, don't you think? I love reading too (not really), but 700 views per person?

 

Well, anyway, I'm really flattered by the 6 of you that are actually reading this. Ok, I'll go upstairs and start writing again, right after I squeak-squeak my hands and get some breakfast.

 

< more "the girl from Ipanema" hold music >

 

Make that 8 (after cool cruiser Pee-ah)...unless I'm one of the original 6. :p. Happy you're back. I almost did a bump-up very early this morning to put this thread back on the first page...but was afraid I'd get a warning from CC.

[Delta Hotel]

We follow the herd of people through the terminal building, where they have some small vendors with ticky-tacky crap, and some vendors who had less crappy ticky-tacky crap. We walk past these, and head out into the sunlight on the other side. We find ourselves on a large sidewalk, facing a large parking lot. About 30ft to our right, there’s a tourist map of the Halifax port area with points-of-interest marked out.

 

I walk up to the map of Halifax’s port area, and I snap a picture of the map. I do this when we come to a map or something on a vacation so that I can refer back to it later on my camera if I need to. If, in the middle of our day, we want to find a place, I bring up my camera (if it’s not already in front of my face) and scroll back a few hundred pictures to the map and zoom in.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re standing on the sidewalk. I start looking for something to take a picture of. Bird, tree, car, rocks… anything to take a picture of. Wifey and the girls want to go to the Del Sol store down the street. If you’re not familiar with the Del Sol chain of stores, good for you, you’re probably better off this way.

 

Wifey insists on going to every Del Sol store, in every port that has one… and it seems that they ALL do. And, just because we’ve been to a Del Sol store already, in a port that we’ve already been to – we still have to go, because they might have new crap that we can buy, or they have the same crap as last time, but she forgot to get something as a gift for someone back home… home-home, not cabin-home.

 

They sell clothing and accessories with chemicals in them that change color when exposed to UV light, like the sun. So if you have one of these shirts, it’ll be a plain white shirt with maybe a black pattern on it, but when you go outside, the pattern fills with different colors. It’s really kind of neat and dramatic.

 

If you’re interested in going to the Halifax Del Sol shop, you exit the Port Terminal, turn right, walk down the street about 200 yards, and it’s on the left side of the street. They have a sign, but it’s a store-front between other stores, so it’s not a stand-alone building.

 

The smell of this street is interesting. There’s a coffee shop on the end of the block, so there’s a very noticeable, but not overpowering, smell of coffee. The other smell that I really noticed was, at first, odd and unidentifiable. I smelled it again and again, thinking to myself, “I know that smell, what is that?”

 

I finally settled on seaweed. It smelled like seaweed. Not the kind of rotting seaweed that you smell on a beach or dried on rocks along the shore, but cooked seaweed. I haven’t had any in many years, but I used to eat different kinds of seaweed soups, and this is the smell of the broth when you cook seaweed into it. I never did find out what the real smell was, because I didn’t see a sign for anywhere that sold seaweed soup. Once I satisfied my brain by associating the smell to something, I didn’t think about it anymore.

 

Parked along the street were large double-decker pink tour buses. These had “BIG Pink Sightseeing” written in BIG letters along the sides. The teenager in me laughed a little at this, not out loud though.

 

 

 

Along with these pink busses were amphibious tour-boat-trucks. In the Washington DC area, we call these “ducks”, because the biggest company in Washington called themselves “The DC Ducks” and the name just stuck. In Halifax, they call theirs “Harbour Hoppers” with a frog as the mascot.

 

 

 

We continue down the street toward the riverfront area. We pass by a statue of Samuel Cunard, which at first mildly excited me into thinking “Oh look, a statue of Samuel Cunard!” Then I realized that I wasn’t really excited by this, but I pointed the statue out to the girls anyway; maybe they’ll find it interesting. At the bottom of the statue, it states “Haligonian – World Benefactor”. The most notable thing about this statue for me was that I now knew what to call a person from Halifax – they’re a Haligonian. I would’ve never guessed that one. Not in a million years… another $5 bet, gone…

 

 

[SnowWhiteNYC]

Actually had the same thought when I saw that statue...

loving this

[Delta Hotel]

[still walking down the street]

Right after the Cunard statue, there’s an archway/sign thing that silently welcomes you to the riverfront/boardwalk area. You can pass under this sign if you like, most people do. There’s also space on either side of the poles to walk around it if you choose. Your choice. Try not to step on the potted plants and bushes, though. I’m sure they put a lot of work into their landscaping.

 

The boardwalk area is nice and clean. There are plenty of trashcans around, and recycle containers every block or so for glass, plastic, and cans. On the side of the recycle container, it said “Solar Compactor”, which intrigued me.

 

 

 

 

When I was a kid living in Connecticut, I would collect cans and bottles while walking to and from school each day and save them up for going to the grocery store. The grocery store that we went to most often was the Stop & Shop.

 

I don’t know if they do this anymore, but they had large can and bottle recycling machines out front that looked like giant soda vending machines. You would drop in a can, and the little screen on the side would show “$00.05”. You’d put in another can and it would bump up to “$00.10” and so on until you were done putting cans in. After each can, a machine inside would crush the can and make a… well… metal-can-crushy sound. The bottles were even more satisfying, because they didn’t just crush, the machine would smash the glass, making a quick and alarming glass-shatter-breaky sound after every bottle.

 

As a kid, I thoroughly enjoyed the crushing sound, and the dollar or two I would get back was good, too. My aunt would go inside the store while I deposited my cans and bottles, then I would come inside, find her, and get to spend my cash however I liked.

 

The “Solar Compactor” recycle bin in Halifax reminded me of this, and I genuinely got excited, and wanted to know if these were mini-versions of the same machines. I thought, “It must be the same kind of machine. If it were just a trash can for cans or plastic, it wouldn’t say ‘compactor’. And furthermore, you don’t need to solar-power a trashcan, it just sits there.” For me, this thought provided solid logic for the hypothesis that these boxes were, indeed, mini-versions of the crushy-machines that I remembered. I didn’t have anything to recycle because, well… we had just come from the ship, and good luck trying to find a can or bottle laying on the ground around here! I logged this away for later in the day.

 

The boardwalk area was bright, clean, and refreshing. All along the boardwalk, I would slow down and walk along the edge by the water. It’s some kind of childhood fascination that I’ve never cared to get over because I get such enjoyment out of it. I love staring into water. It doesn’t matter how deep the water is, how clear or how muddy.

 

If it’s shallow like a puddle, I look at the bottom and imagine the water being deeper. If it’s clear, I enjoy the clarity of the water and appreciate the fact that I can see what’s in the water. If it’s murky water, I stare into it wondering if I’ll see something move or emerge from the darkness. If it’s deep water, I stare and wonder what’s underneath the surface that I can’t see… and just because I can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. This part of my imagination has always provided me with such delight, that I try to entertain it as often as I can.

 

In Halifax, the water is clear enough to see to the bottom of the harbor closest to the boardwalk – about 4-8 feet deep, depending on which part you’re looking at. At first glance, there’s nothing but greenish brown water. You can see large items at the bottom like old pilings and tires, but if you keep staring, you’ll see more. Floating on top of the water are some jellyfish, a couple different kinds.

 

If you’re patient, and look deeper, you’ll see more in the waters here. I call my daughters over to stare into the water with me. Within the first few seconds, I get the normal “I don’t see anything” complaint. I don’t respond and wait for their eyes to focus… then, they start finding things. We saw fish ranging from 1-inch to 5-inches, several types of star-fish, and many crabs. Some of these were close enough that I could reach out and touch them, but they’re hard to see… if you’re not looking for them.

 

Here are some jellyfish that we saw. I don’t have any pictures of the fish, crabs, or starfish because it’s really hard to take clear pictures through water, especially on a clear sunny day where the water sparkles so much. I believe that the first jellyfish is the “Moon Jelly”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the boardwalk, I look back and see our ship and snap a photo. It looks far away, but it’s really not that bad. The distance “as the crow flies” isn’t that far, but the boardwalk is zig-zagged like dental moulding, and that makes for a lot more walking.

 

 

 

 

We see a few really neat-looking and impressive ships in the harbor as we make our way to the Halifax Maritime Museum. We also passed by a restaurant that had a really interesting name, and their outdoor place-settings were well chosen so Wifey told me to take a picture of that. I think she said something like, “Hey, I like that. Take a picture of that.” The restaurant’s name was “The Bicycle Thief.” We didn’t eat there; I’m sure it was good. I did take a picture of it, though.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 17, 2011 by Delta Hotel

[A.S.]

Very interesting review!

 

Are you purposely not posting any photos of you and your family? Sometimes it's nice to attach the face to the story.

 

Anyway, you have a great flair for telling a story. Am enjoying it.

[Delta Hotel]

Very interesting review!

 

Are you purposely not posting any photos of you and your family? Sometimes it's nice to attach the face to the story.

 

Anyway, you have a great flair for telling a story. Am enjoying it.

 

Glad you're enjoying the story.

 

Yes, I am intentionally not using real names or the faces of myself or my family. My wife and I try to always keep our family's security in mind when we're online. I'm pretty good at finding my way around a computer and the internet, and I know other people are, too. So if I can make it just a little bit harder to find me and my girls, that's fine with me. Also, my wife is paranoid when it comes to online security.

 

If you want to know what I look like, picture a 5'7", 140lb, medium-build, Vietnamese-looking guy (any of them will do, they all look the same). I'm not Vietnamese though, I'm American; but both of my parents were from Vietnam. :) Wifey is a gorgeous brunette that's a little smaller than me. And my two daughters are two of the most beautiful little girls imagineable.

 

Hopefully I can make up for the missing faces with a good story.

[PalmettoNative]

 

This is my new favorite restaurant name...+1

[jetsfan]

I am loving your review. I also agree with you. I am not overly paranoid, but I am always surprised when people post so many personal photos of themselves, especially kids. Too many issues to think about. Looking forward to the rest.

[roswellmom]

Great review so far. We're on the July 30th sailing and someone on our roll call posted your thread. No need to bump your thread to the top. Your viewers are doing it for you. :)

[JPH814]

 

Your daughter looks a lot like you!

[Delta Hotel]

On our way to the museum, I see this boat-bumper sitting on the docks, covered in muscles and barnacles. My eyes get wide at the idea of having a gigantic bowl of linguini with a dark red sauce, piled high with the hundreds or thousands of muscles that are stuck on this one bumper. When I say gigantic, I’m picturing a bowl the size of a kiddie-pool.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s a sailboat that passed us… just another scenery picture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we approach the Maritime Museum, the girls notice a huge sculpture of a wave in the park area. Just out front of the museum is a playground. There’s a wooden playground in the shape of a ship with multiple levels, and surrounded by rocks. Our kids are used to playgrounds being surrounded by mulch or wood-chips, sand, or sometimes that shredded-rubber-tire stuff, but rocks is a new one for them.

 

They run to the big wave sculpture and stand underneath it. I take the first photo as they’re running, and the second one is the almost-9-year-old jumping up and touching the bottom of the wave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As we’re walking away from the wave, I notice two teenage boys as they run up the backside of the wave, and then sit down when they reach the top. One of the boys pulls out a cigarette and lighter, and starts to smoke while on top of the wave. Then, I notice the stone signs all around the base of the wave that say “FOR YOUR PROTECTION – DO NOT CLIMB”. I suppose teenagers in Halifax aren’t much different than teenagers anywhere else. Seriously… it’s carved in STONE!

 

 

 

 

Before heading into the museum, we let the girls play on the playground for a while – hoping that they’ll burn off some of that energy before having to walk through a museum for the next hour or more. The girls step onto the rock-covered play area, and start looking at the rocks. My girls love rocks… and if you let them, they’ll collect rocks in their pockets until they can’t fit anymore.

 

The 5-year-old finds a rock that she really likes, and begins to carry it around the playground with her. She climbs up onto the wooden ship and tries to follow her big sister. At one point, the next level is too high for her to easily reach, so she puts the rock down on the next level up (about chest high), and begins to climb up, intending to pick up her rock when she gets up there. As she’s climbing up, a little boy runs by, picks up her rock, and throws it off of the ship into the sea of rocks below. She sees this just as she reaches next level. She gets very upset, stands there for a second with her shoulders slumped, and stares forlornly at the sea of rocks below. With determination, but without enthusiasm, she begins climbing down to go hunt for her rock.

 

I see this happen, and saw the rock hit the ground near me. As she starts to climb down to the ground, I step over and pick up the rock, and hold it. She reaches the ground, runs to the area where the boy threw the rock, and begins searching the ground. Folded at the waist with knees unbent, she wanders around scanning the rocks below her. I ask her, “What are you looking for?” She replies with a sigh, “A rock.” I said slowly as I reached out my hand and opened it, “This rock?” Without really examining the rock in my hand, she exclaimed “Yes!” She quickly grabs it, and as she turns to run back to the playground, she shouts, “Thank you, Daddy!” So the real point of this is – there’s a playground outside of the museum, and it’s got lots of rocks around it.

 

 

 

 

We still have this rock. It came home with us in her toy bag, and it’s currently in the pocket of our car door.

[SnowWhiteNYC]

Bringing back memories of our Canadian cruise...vivid details....awesome...

 

Our son has the same fascination with water.... that made me smile too...thanks!

[ShakyBeef]

Your daughter looks a lot like you!

 

LOL! Seriously, we're both LOLing.:D

 

We've also been told they (DDs) look like twins.:p

 

 

Seriously though, we've obscured their faces to protect the innocent. Their father may be a moose picture thief, but they are only innocent children.

[nybumpkin]

I haven’t been to many foreign countries, so I still get excited when traveling anywhere that qualifies as “another country”. On our Alaska cruise, our last stop before coming back to Seattle was Victoria, British Columbia. We got off of the ship and walked into the Canadian Customs terminal. I had my passport out and ready. As we walked into the large cavernous building, there were no lines, no customs agents, no check-in or anything like it. Everyone just walks through the building from one side to another. About half way through the building, we see two people in uniform standing at a desk. I assumed these were Canadian Customs agents, so I start to walk toward them; I wanted a stamp on my passport.

 

As I approached them, they saw me coming and both turned and went into a door just a few feet away. I stopped, slowly lowered my hand with the passport in it, and had a little pity-myself moment. All I wanted was a stamp on my passport. I was willing to answer whatever questions they had for me, and to provide the identification and papers they needed to give me the stamp – but that didn’t happen. I was prepared for anything except a hard math question. I’m normally pretty good at math, but the higher-level stuff has faded from memory… I haven’t used any of that higher math since college. That was 15 years ago!

You know our oldest just returned from a tour that visited Djibouti, Aqaba, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait and Singapore - and the only stamp in his passport is from Singapore. Go figure.

[San_Antonio_Ex]

Oh no! I've come to the end...please post more, post more!! What an engaging writer you are!!

[australian_girl]

Keep it coming. :)

 

Thanks for sharing.

[Delta Hotel]

Enter the Museum! The Halifax Maritime Museum of the Atlantic is pretty neat. I’m not real big on museums. I didn’t go to many as a child, so I don’t have a real appreciation of them. We enter the museum and walk up to the reception desk. The admission was $8.75 per adult, $4.75 for kids, and the 5-year-old was free. Our total admission for our family of four was $22.25.

 

 

In the main entrance lobby, there’s a high brick wall with a glass ceiling. There’s a pirate display in the middle of it, which immediately drew the attention of the girls. Wifey and I walk to the reception desk to pay and get information. Once you pay for your admission, they give you these little plastic tabs as your “ticket”. The tabs are about 1 square-inch, they’re red, and they have a notch cut out of the center like a tiny red clip-style bookmark. These little tabs go on your shirt or clothing to indicate that you’ve paid your admission.

 

After paying, I walk over and read the sign that Daughter #1 is reading about pirates. She asks me why the man in front of the sign is in the cage. I ask her if she read the sign, and she says that she has. I tell her that the man in the cage is a pirate and that pirates were just criminals with boats. When they caught pirates a long time ago, they punished them for their crimes… often by killing them. She says “Oh, ok”, then we move further into the museum area.

 

 

The museum had lots of great boats, ships, history, and information. They’ve got a live parrot on display that occasionally talks, but it only seems to talk when no one’s around it. I heard the parrot say something, then a bunch of kids run up to it and try to get it to say something else. It refused every time. When the kids gave up and left the area, he’d say something again, which started the cycle all over.

 

They have a model of the Halifax harbor along with Theodore the tugboat and some of his friends (but no Pugwash). Just around the corner from the front desk is a Fresnel lens from a lighthouse. We watched a video about the Halifax explosion of 1917. I had never heard about this, but it was a really captivating story. I’ll give you the short version.

 

The following was copied from an internet source:

 

The Halifax Explosion occurred on Thursday, December 6, 1917, when the city of

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, was devastated by the huge detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a Frenchcargo ship, fully loaded with wartime explosives, which accidentally collided with the NorwegianSS Imo in "The Narrows" section of the Halifax Harbour. About 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, or collapsed buildings and it is estimated that over 9,000 people were injured. The Halifax Explosion remains the world's largest man-made accidental explosion.

 

The movie about the Halifax explosion is about 15-20 minutes long, and is very informative, but a bit depressing. We move into another wing of the museum which is mostly decorated in pink. There’s an entire room of the museum dedicated to the history of maritime homosexuality. The museum’s exhibit is called “Hello Sailor! Gay Life on the Ocean Wave”.

 

If you’re going to this museum and are interested in this particular exhibit – look for the room that’s mostly pink; I believe it’s in one of the corners of the lower floor. If you’re not interested in seeing this exhibit, steer clear of the pink room in the corner. More information about this exhibit is available on the museum’s website.

 

In the next room, there’s a large open area with real boats and several large models.

 

 

 

 

 

Upstairs in the museum, there’s a large octopus/squid-like creature that’s interesting to look at, but it’s only a decoration in the corner. This is an interpretive model of the Kraken. He’s visible from the room in the picture above. If you’re standing where I was in the picture, the octo-squid-thing is above and behind you.

 

This museum also has a lot of information about the Titanic, and has some artifacts and recovered pieces from the wreckage. There was a little model of the sinking Titanic inside of a dark display box. There’s a little glass window that you look through to see the model. I took a picture of it with my camera, and it would have turned out clearer if some boy hadn’t shoved his way between me and the glass while saying, “It’s my turn.” The skin-colored blur on the left side is the boy’s arm. I could have cropped it out, but leaving it there helps me remember the little boy, and what’s a vacation but a small pile of memories?

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re tired of the museum, and want to leave. When I say, “We’re tired”, I meant, “I’m tired…”

 

The girls are still looking at boats, silver coins, naval swords and dirks, and models of ships but I campaigned for leaving the museum and seeing more of Halifax. We compromise. They look at a few more exhibits on the second floor, and then we leave the museum.