Jacksonville - Why???

 Yes, I skipped Norfolk, Virginia. That's because we were there on a Sunday, very few things were open because the interesting stuff shuts down at the end of October, and I picked up the bug that Larry had on Hallowe'en. We were supposed to have gone to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, but I spent much of the day napping.

The following day was a sea day and I was feeling more myself, so by the time we reached Jacksonville we were ready for our tour to St. Augustine, America's oldest city. You needed to have something to do from Jacksonville's port, because it is literally 25 minutes away from the city, there are no taxis and the shuttle between the ship and city only runs until 2:30 p.m. Ride sharing is available, but can you imagine the Uber premium for a one-way ride from downtown?!! There must be something about no bus traffic into the cruise port after 3:00 p.m., as even the tours had to be back by that time.

So we took the 45 minute ride to St. Augustine, were driven around the small old city with a couple of photo stops and then were let loose on the old downtown - now a compact area streets of shops, restaurants and hotels - for some time for lunch and shopping.

One of our stops was at a building that was originally a hotel, but is now home to St. Augustine's City Hall as well as the Lightner Museum.

The courtyard at the City Hall. Not a bad
place to take a work break!

Our second stop was the fortress, the Castillo de San Marcos. It is a national park, and one of only 3 walled fortresses in North America. The other two - San Juan and Quebec! We didn't have time to go inside for a good look around, so just took some photos from the outside.

During our free time we wandered a little way around town, which is very easily walkable, and found a couple of interesting buildings. We stopped only a block or two short of the most spectacular architecture in the town. The Memorial Presbyterian Church was built in the same style as the cathedral in Florence, and likely dominated the town until the trees all grew up around it. Now we have something to look for the next time we happen to be in St. Augustine.

Instead we found a couple of the other churches:

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine

Grace United Methodist Church

The original City Gates.

For our lunch break we found the Prohibition Kitchen - small doorway from St. George Street led us into a huge, two level bar and restaurant, obviously very popular with the locals judging by the stack of paging devices at the welcome desk.

It was a little after noon and already the place was getting busy. We ordered 'burgers' - I had the flounder sandwich and Larry ordered one of their special house burgers, voted the best on the east coast of Florida. After looking at these photos you will understand that we ate a very, very small dinner that night!

My flounder filet was much larger than the bun

Larry's special burger was topped with an egg and
a couple of other things.

When he picked up the top bun, he found that
they even branded that! Apparently only
on the house special burgers, though.

So by 2:00 p.m. we were all back on the bus and driving back to Jaxport. We arrived just before 3:00 so our tour guide was very happy!

We had an overnight stay in Jacksonville - we think that may be because some of the other ports further north like Charleston weren't available and Crystal had to go where they could - with a tour to Amelia Island going out on Wednesday. We opted to stay on board, and were glad we did because the next day had a lot of on and off showers. Our friend Kathy did that tour and reported that it was nice but not spectacular.

We were up at the Sunset Bar for our 6:00 sailout in the darkening evening. The port is a good way up a river and it was very interesting to find and follow the navigation lights as we sailed. It took us until almost 7:00 to reach the Atlantic Ocean.

We crossed this bridge on our tour to
St. Augustine.

 Next stop - Nassau. For us it will be an in-port sea day. With at least 6 other ships, some of them very large, in port with us, there's no point to going anywhere!

Boston and New York #2

 Our two duplicated ports on this back to back were Boston and New York. In both cases we had overnight stays after evening arrivals, followed by mid-afternoon departures.

We arrived in Boston at noon on October 30 and once the US immigration clearance was done, we took the shuttle bus into downtown and headed straight for the Old Union Oyster House for lunch. We don't come to Boston very often, but as it is one of the oldest restaurants in the US, we make a point of visiting. Lunch did not disappoint. We shared a seafood platter and crab cakes, and once we were done with that, and the clam chowder starter, we didn't need to eat anything else that day!

We wandered around the Quincy Market and Old State House area for a bit after lunch, and headed back to the ship before 5 p.m.

The next day was Hallowe'en and the Crystal Plaza was decorated for a dance party that evening. But first, the display of crew pumpkin carvings was up and waiting for guests to choose a favourite. That was a hard decision to make!

Crew members carved all of the pumpkins on the display. The prize for the creator of the Guest Favourite was a dinner in one of the specialty restaurants.

The entrance to Waterside, the main dining room, had its own display:

Unfortunately we missed the afternoon and evening festivities as Larry was hit by a bug that laid him low for almost 2 days.

We sailed into New York on November 1, arriving at 5 p.m. It was a beautiful day and the skyline and Statue of Liberty were perfect for photos.

The skyline as we were about to cross under
the Verrazano Narrows Bridge

The raised 'garden' over the water actually turned
out to be an amphitheatre.

We stayed on board for the evening and were treated to a concert by pianist Julian Gargiulo. More on him in the On Board post coming up next. He put on a great show even though the crowd was rather sparse.

On Saturday morning we did a foodie walking tour of the Hell's Kitchen neighbourhood of New York City. Little did we know that Hell's Kitchen was the same area where we had already visited lots of restaurants when we were in New York on previous occasions.

Our tour guide, Jennifer, was very knowledgeable about the history of the area and brought it to life through her stories of the gangs, speakeasys and Prohibition. Of course someone asked why the area was called 'Hell's Kitchen'. Her favourite story was one of two police officers, a veteran and a rookie, who were watching a small riot in the gang-ridden area. The younger cop, talking about the disregard for any laws, remarked, 'I think this place is Hell itself!' The older replied, 'Hell has a mild climate. This is Hell's Kitchen!'

There are other reasons for Hell's Kitchen getting that name, but suffice it to say that during the mid 1800s it was the roughest and dirtiest part of the city. After Prohibition and the speakeasys, things were cleaned up and theatres began to move into this part of New York. Restaurant Row, West 46th Street between 8th and 9th, is a particular block that has many good restaurants and bars. It was developed and patrolled by the city so that theatre patrons would have a safe area to go for a meal before a performance. We've been to a few restaurants in this block over the years.

Now to the places we visited on our tour. We began at a Japanese Barbecue called Gyu-Kaku. It is a teppanyaki restaurant with quite a varied menu. We had a couple of types of beef, zucchini and a bowl of noodles with vegetables.

Our second stop was at a fusion restaurant - Indian and Mexican. It is called Taco Mahal. The owner has a few small shops around Manhattan, having taken over a restaurant from her father an changing the menu up a bit. We had chicken tikka masala tacos on a chapati bread. It certainly was something out of the ordinary - and quite spicy!

The mural on the wall. There weren't more than 14
seats in the whole place

Our final stop on the tour was at The Meatball Shop. This is also one of a number of locations. The idea behind this restaurant is to offer everything a la carte. If you want just a meatball without spaghetti, you can get that. Or whatever items there are on the menu. Jennifer had ordered a small meatball for each of us as well a mini chicken meatballs and roasted cauliflower.

When we were done with all that, we were pretty much full, and it was time to head back toward the pier. Everything is really close by in New York; many people didn't realize that the heart of NYC was only about 6 street blocks down and 6 avenue blocks straight east from the pier.

We had a mid-afternoon sailout from New York. Those of us attending art class had a great view from Marketplace. We interrupted our class to go outside and take photos.

A panorama of the skyline just after we left the pier.

Our next port stops are the odd ones for this itinerary - Norfolk, Virginia and Jacksonville, Florida. Jacksonville is so odd for us that it is a even maiden call for Serenity.

Late Autumn in Quebec

 One of the things people from the west and south of the US look forward to on a Canada-New England cruise is seeing the fall colours in the leaves along the St. Lawrence River. This is the final itinerary for Crystal this year, and, as they seem to pride themselves on being the last ship out of Quebec every year, most of the time the leaves have already fallen from the trees altogether. Fortunately for all of us, with the slightly warmer weather, there was still a lot of colour to see during our all day cruise up the river.

We had a double overnight stay in Quebec City as we arrived at 6:00 p.m. on Friday and departed at 2:00 on Sunday. We had decided to go for a walk in the old town rather than do any tours, mainly because this was our third visit to Quebec in 2 years and we had done the tours that were offered.

What we had forgotten was that most towns in Quebec observe a Hallowe'en tradition of having the young children shell out in the local shops on the Saturday before the big event. As a result, it was very busy all over Old Quebec with parents dressing up just as elaborately as some of the kids. We saw everything from magicians to princesses to even one guy dressed as a Hot Dog!

There were lots of fall and Hallowe'en 
decorations all over Old Quebec

These umbrellas seem to come
back every year for the summer

A view of the Chateau Frontenac and the
lovely colours

The Chateau lit up at night

Sunday morning was rather cold and windy, feeling like -3 degrees Celsius. We knew it would be cold and perhaps rainy here in Quebec, but didn't want to pack heavy clothing for just one day, so we elected to stay on board and wait for the 2:00 p.m. sailout.

Looking out the windows in the Crystal Cove, we could see some snow squalls on the river, and a check of my phone's weather app said there were flurries expected. Before we sailed we saw our first snow of the season.

We had moved up to Marketplace to grab some salad for lunch when we found ourselves in the midst of a snow squall. I ran back to our stateroom to grab my phone and get a few photos:

The open area at the back of our Deck. We couldn't even
see shore!

Blue sky and tiny hail stones.

The snow/hail almost looks like styrofoam
pellets on the outside of the window

The pool deck

Of course the Filipino crew as well as others from countries that don't get snow all had their cameras out to take videos to send home. And by the way, a lot of the colours we had seen on Friday's cruise to Quebec were already gone by Sunday because of the windy weather.

So, all in all a typical late fall day in Canada! Now we look forward to almost 3 full days at sea to reach Boston where the weather is supposed to be much nicer!