St. John (Bay of Fundy), New Brunswick

If You'd Prefer a Continuous

Slide Show of all the Pics
(rather than having to click on each image below)
Go Here

We pulled out of Halifax at 4pm, leaving the three mega-ships in port and passing both commercial and military vessels. After a night which started out somewhat turbulent, our morning cruise into St John, New Brunswick, was very smooth. We passed into the Bay of Fundy and came into port around noon and were docked by 1pm, joining the gigantic Caribbean Princess. Sergei, who had been our butler on two previous cruises, came in and we watched the docking procedure together, comparing ourselves to the larger ship in length, passenger load and crew. He said he hated working on the "millenium class" ships and up and that you did not even get to know any of the crew, let alone the passengers. When we disembarked we were impressed by the welcome at the port which included roses for the ladies, hat pins for the men and a tour guide dressed in period costume. Our expectations were high as we had just come off three good days of tours. However, as nice as this guide was, nice was not enough. She wasn't engaging enough and did not include those of us at the back of the bus enough. We drove through some of St John, looking at the original homes, and went to the Reversible Rapids. There is a location where the incoming water from the Bay meets the outgoing water from the St John River and the current reverses at low and high tides. We were a little late for a tidal change and the parking lot was packed so we moved on, heading out to the east of the city and on to St Martin's, a small fishing village and former ship building community of 450. It turned out that the guide was originally from St Martin's so after the hour+ drive we had heard a fair amount about St John, the coastal area between St John and St Martin's and finally, the sea caves and beach at St Martin's where we would have the "world famous" seafood chowder. It was a pleasant stop and the chowder was fine, but it seemed a let down after the exceptional tours we had recently been on, even the bus tour around the city of Halifax the previous day. We stopped in the city to visit the City Market and then went back to see that the Reversible Rapids had indeed reversed. This time we were able to get pictures as there was no one there. We then headed back to the dock and were the last to board the ship, which departed the dock 20 minutes later.