Tuesday June 13, 2023
Hi folks! We got lucky with another great day of weather. And no real smoke (I think it
all went down to NC! Lol). It was actually pretty warm with a high of 81 which is hotter than we expected it to be, so we’re happy.
Our port stop today was to Saguenay, which is part of the larger Quebec province. It’s a beautiful, somewhat isolated area up the Saguenay river off the St Lawrence seaway. To get there you go thru one of the few fjord areas in North America, with the fjords being over 1,000 feet tall and the water depths going to over 900 feet deep. We didn’t get to see them going up the river since it was 2 in the morning but got to see them on the way back around 4 PM. Reminded us of Norway!
We did one excursion today which was a bus trip thru the Saguenay Valley. It was just OK, nothing great. We stopped at this area where a major flood had occurred in 1996 and only one house survived out of all of them. It is now a museum and they have water flowing out of the back door of the house just to show how bad it was! They luckily survived by having an 8 foot basement (which they need since they have to bury the water lines 8 feet deep to prevent freezing over the winter)!
We then stopped at this abandoned paper mill that was really the heart of the town but during the recession it went out of business but it was amazing to see how they had all the buildings interconnected to the river that brought the trees down to make into paper.
We then drove by this contemporary art piece that the town commissioned which was a pyramid made totally out of “yield” roadway signs meaning their little town yields to the water but does not break! Kind of corny but a powerful message!
In the afternoon we just chilled on the balcony and admired the scenery as we floated thru the fjords. They announced we’d be passing by the Our Lady of Saguenay statue. Legend has it that a man trying to cross the Saguenay River fell thru the ice and pleaded with the Virgin Mary to save his life. He was saved and erected a statue of the Virgin Mary to thank her for saving his life. We saw it with the binoculars Regent has in the room (nice touch!) but we couldn’t quite figure out how he got it up on that fjord!
Then we went to try our hand at Trivia for the first time. They do it just like Seabourn where they encourage people to gather in teams of 6-10 which helps with the brain power! We were on a team of 6 but we didn’t do great. We only got 6 out of 15. Ouch! Oh well, it was fun!
We tried out the other specialty restaurant for dinner tonight which was an Italian themed one named Sette Mari. (Seven Seas in Italian!). It was really good! But I think I liked the Prime 7 better but this one is as good as the Compass Rose main dining room.
We went to the show tonight and it was a comedian. He was pretty funny and will be having another show later on the cruise so we’ll go see him again. We ended our night as always with slots and piano. We have a sea day tomorrow so we can sleep in which we’ll need since we pass into a new time zone and have to set our clocks forward one hour. Hope everyone had a great Tuesday!
The Wandering Italian 