Sunday, September 27th, 2009, Halifax, New Scotland (Nova Scotia), the Waterfront.

After breakfast I selected and condensed 11 pictures of Iceland for emailing home and composed an email note for our family and friends to go with them.

Because we had skipped landing in St. John's, we ended up arriving in Halifax a half a day early, which gave us more time ashore. The Jewel docked at Pier 20, the pier closest to the harbor district of Halifax. As we docked, we were entertained by a couple of bagpipers. Disembarking around 2:00 p.m., we sauntered along the boardwalk and quayside walks until we reached the Information Centre, where we picked up a map of downtown Halifax plus the information that free WiFi was available at several of the sites along the central waterfront. Unfortunately, the nearest Wifi site to Pier 20 was a couple of blocks away, so I was dubious about connecting directly from the ship but resolved to try it when we returned.

After the information center we continued along the waterfront, which gave us nice views out over the harbor. Several ships offering sailing tours were berthed there along with some rather expensive looking private yachts, including one somewhat rusty one that hailed from Germany, possibly Hamburg. It had certainly come a long way! Another 30-foot or so sailing ship had a simply outlandishly big main mast in comparison to the size of the ship; it looked dangerously over-rigged to me and I wondered what Laura, David, or Bill--the real sailors in our family--would have thought of it.

At the end of the harbor we found some nice small shops in a complex of historic buildings, but the ATM there wanted to charge us for cash! Deeply affronted, we curled into town to a shopping center about 3 blocks up the hill. Although most of the stores in the wharfside area had been open, the stores in the mall were closed because it was Sunday. We did, however, find an ATM that didn't charge us any service fees and took out $60 Canadian.

Since we were already up the hill, we walked back toward the ship on a street parallelling the shoreline that had many small businesses. On our way back we saw the horse drawn trolley that Phyllis and Lois were taking for a sightseeing tour of the city. We waved and took pictures. Back at Pier 20 Monika purchased some kind of a rum drink from a liquor store that was open and we walked around the Via Rail train station and Westin Hotel where we had ended our trans-Canada train trip back in the 1990s. Fond memories.

After dinner back on board, we lugged Baby up to Deck 13 forward and tried to see if we could capture a WiFi signal. It turned out we had to hold the computer in position on the railing between a gap in the glass panels in order to get a signal, so Monika held it in position while I worked the keyboard. In this awkward fashion we did manage to connect to the Internet and check our email, but our setup was too unstable for me to compose any replies. But, using the "no news is good news" heuristic,l it was nice to be reassured that everything was basically OK back at home.