First Impressions of a New Ship

 Hello at last! We're in the midst of some technical difficulty in sending photos taken on my iPhone to my Google account so we can add them to the blog. Once we get that resolved, we'll add the photos to the blog posts. Late update: I finally got the photos transferred, but then it was almost impossible to get connected to the blog to update. I'm finishing this up at 11 p.m. after a time change...hopefully everyone has gone to bed so the internet is available!

We arrived in Barcelona early on Friday afternoon and fortunately were able to check in to our room immediately. The forecast was calling for possible showers in the afternoon and it would be getting dark at 5:30, the same as at home, and Park Guell was at least a 20 minute taxi ride away. All of these things conspired to keep us in the hotel for the evening instead of visiting the park. We heard from fellow guests on the ship that you need at least 3 or 4 hours to see it properly, so we're planning a full day there on our next visit in Barcelona.

The Sofia Hotel was very nice, obviously new, and quite modern. All the furnishings in the room were very sleek and minimalist, and quite comfortable, even if only for one night.

The next morning we transferred to the ship along with about15 other couples. It was quite a surprise to see one of these couples, as we had been sitting beside them in the Air France/KLM Lounge at Pearson Airport on Thursday afternoon. They left the lounge before we did, on a different flight, and we thought no more of it. Then to see them waiting to board the bus was a bit of a shock. Of course, we've seen them all over the ship since then, but have never spoken to them. They probably don't remember us anyway.

Regent Seven Seas Splendor is quite a beautiful ship. The public areas are all spacious and bright, and decorated in neutral colours. Everything seems wide open and there's lots of space between table in the lounges. The ship carries about 700 guests, and even though this transatlantic sailing is full, we so far haven't felt crowded anywhere except at the elevators after a show. So we've been using the stairs quite a bit!

Our suite is on Deck 8, not one of the fancier ones, but spacious enough with lots of drawer space and a large closet. Here are a couple of photos:

Everyone we heard from before we came for the cruise raved about the quality of the food on board. Just the design of the specialty restaurants is impressive!

Pacific Rim, the Asian restaurant

the entrance to Pacific Rim

One of the lounges. There's lots of live music
around the ship every night

The main dining room, Compass Rose

Chartreuse, the French restaurant

Steakhouse, Prime 7

We met one of Larry's Cruise Critic acquaintances on Sunday. It had been arranged that we would get together sometime and we happened to find each other in the Observation Lounge. They had space in their dinner reservation at Chartreuse on Sunday evening and asked us if we'd like to join them. So we had a first example of specialty dining almost immediately.

We had a great meal with Laraine, her husband Bob, and their friends Laura and Dave. The star of the show was, of course, the food!

Larry's Steak Tartare appetizer

Cheese Souffle appetizer

Duck Breast with marinated rutabaga...
it's amazing how they can make boring
food taste delicious!

Opera Cake for dessert

Sunday night we also passed out of the Mediterranean and into the Atlantic Ocean. The captain had been asked when we would see the Rock of Gibraltar - around 11:00 - and we sailed by right on time! Surprisingly there was enough light around that with the help of Night Mode on the camera, I was able to get a fairly good shot of it.

We were in for one more sea day before arriving in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands on Tuesday morning. The weather turned out to be not so warm, and we spent much of the day 'vegetating' in the lounge. 

The social hostess, Annabel, also hosts crafting get-togethers on sea days. For the transatlantic sailing she's created a Needlepoint Challenge. Those of us who are interested have received a needlepoint kit that is really for a frame where the blank centre section is cut out after the outside frame area has been stitched. But the challenge is to design and stitch something for that centre part of the frame. We have until almost the end of the cruise to complete the work. All the challenge pieces will be displayed and our fellow guests will get to vote for their favourite one. Whoever gets the most votes will win a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne and a bag full of small needlepoint kits. Just something to add to my knitting project and blog writing.....

Our tour in Lanzarote is all day, so we're gearing up for that. Laraine has told us that it is well worth seeing the whole island, so we're looking forward to it.

Off We Go Again!

Now that winter has made its first appearance, we're heading off for another couple of weeks away. This time we will be on board the Regent Seven Seas Splendor. We were last on a Regent ship in Alaska in 2009, so we're expecting quite a few changes. Larry has some Cruise Critic acquaintances who are already onboard, and will be staying for our 14-night Transatlantic voyage, and they have already been posting lots of information and photos.

We will only have three port stops on this cruise that starts in Barcelona on Saturday. We'll be in the Canary Islands for two days, and then in San Juan before leaving the ship in Miami. We'll have to leave her in good condition as our friends Mary Ellen and Ed will be boarding when we disembark.

As usual, we'll be posting our impressions and photos around the ship, as well as the food, which from reports is fantastic, and our few ports. Never having been to the Canary Islands before, we're looking forward to our excursions there.

We hope you enjoy following along!

The Little Town of Gaspe

 We had been to Gaspe before, and had taken the hour's bus ride to Perce to take a boat ride around the rock, so we decided to take the tender into town and wander around a bit on our own.

Gaspe is a very small town, but it was one of the earliest French settlements on the St. Lawrence. It is the main hub of the Acadian Peninsula, and boasts, among other things, a VIA Rail Station, a liquor store, and McDonalds, and, of course, a Tim Horton's (this being the first one we've seen since Montreal!). The local branch of TD Canada Trust has been there since 1902!!

It was a lovely day, and, once we were away from the harbour, not very windy.

The Cathedral of Gaspe. It is the only
timber church in North America, unfortunately
closed for visitors.

There are a couple of very nice looking B&Bs in
town

A wildlife sighting!!

St. Paul's Anglican Church

Along the waterfront promenade there are
replicas of historical homes and plaques
telling of the town's history

Seabourn Quest at anchor with the autumn colours
in the background

Yes, we bought some Timbits! Just because
it was the first Tim's we'd seen since Montreal

We left Gaspe at 3:00 in the afternoon for our day and a half at sea directly back to Montreal. The wind certainly hadn't gone down any as we sailed back out to the Gulf.

This is a little community of cottages up in the hills
across from Gaspe

 We rounded this point, 
Cap Gaspe, to get back into
the Gulf of St. Lawrence

In the evening we had been invited to dine with Tiffany and Callum and a few other guests. We had a great time and learned that this group of singers and dancers would be ending their current contract in the middle of October, after the next cruise. Tiffany and Kimberley will be back on one of the other ships, and Callum, from London, is leaving the ships to do something completely different. We really enjoyed their performances (one more tomorrow) and the fact that they spent time interacting with the guests and getting to know them.

The show in the evening was by a group called Citizen West, a 'boy band' trio of singers who were quite talented and entertaining.

The Mingan Archipelago

The what?? Although we usually associate archipelagos with warm water regions, we do have one on the north shore of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and it is a National Park.

Our port stop yesterday was the small town of Havre-Saint-Pierre, another industrial town originally settled because of timber and fish. Now there's apparently a good amount of the ore that produces titanium also to be found in the area, and this has become a major industry in the area.

We had to be in the Grand Salon at 7:50 a.m. to meet our tour, so we had a light room service breakfast and got our things together. It was already windy as we boarded the tender, so we were wondering what the boat trip to Ile Niapiskau would be like, and what kind of boat we would be on!

A few minutes after stepping off the tender in the town's harbour, we were already on board the vessel that would take us to the island. Fortunately it was a nice, large boat with inside seating and an upper outside deck. We were a fairly small group, so we could all sit inside on the trip out. But as we sailed slowly by one of the other islands, some of us had to get outside with our cameras.

About 10 minutes after leaving there, we arrived at Ile Niapiskau and met our Parks Canada ranger guide. The islands of the St. Lawrence are limestone, and our guide explained the formation of the material, the compression from the ice layer during the Ice Age, and how over thousands of years, the earth's crust is bouncing back very slowly since the ice melted. It is during the process of rising through the surface of the water and being eroded by wave action that these pillars and outcroppings have been sculpted into their current shapes, which haven't changed since they rose completely onto land.

Many of the stone pillars have been given names. Niapiskau itself means 'pointy rock' in Innu, the language of the local first nations. They may have had their names, but the early area settlers, when they explored, gave them others that have probably evolved somewhat over time.

This is 'La Grande Dame' or The Lady. 

This one is Wedding Cake

And this one is, depending on your age and aversion
to all things political, either Cyrano de Bergerac
or Richard Nixon!

The views around just the small part of the island we visited were quite spectacular.

Yes, she was actually here!

We had a walk around one of the trails for about an hour, and then time to wander around the pillars and along the beach on our own.

Once the boat came back to pick us up, we were rather happy that we had to get up early to be in the first group out. There were at least twice as many people in the next landing group, needing two guides, and some had to face the wind on the top deck on the way over. Our trip back was rather nice as the wind was behind us, so we sat up top.

Once back at Havre-Saint-Pierre, we thought we'd take a short walk around town. But the wind was blowing so strong that we literally had grit from the road blowing into our faces as soon as we left the shelter of the harbour building. So much for that idea! While waiting for the tender, the local security guard told us, when we asked it was always this windy, that yesterday they'd had no wind at all!

Oh well, at least we managed to get a couple of days' blog posting done and spend a leisurely afternoon on the ship. Our Assistant Cruise Director, Nick, did a pre-dinner show that was excellent. He was recently part of the international tour of 'Jersey Boys' and sang a wide variety of music, including one of Michael Buble's hits. He even sounds a bit like him. And the evening presentation was Jo Rochell, a British singer/pianist. She'd already done one show in the cruise, and she was just as great the second time.

Because the wind never let up before we left port, the overnight started out with quite a bit of movement from the ship. We didn't have huge waves, but to get to our next stop at Gaspe, we would have to cross the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the Acadian Peninsula, running across the wind. As the captain said when explaining why we had to change our itinerary because of Hurricane Fiona, this ship 'doesn't do waves very well'. She's stable enough, but because Quest is a relatively small ship, she gets buffetted around more by wind and seas.

Baie-Comeau and Sept-Iles, Two Working Towns

If there's anything the guest onboard Seabourn Quest will learn on this revised itinerary, it's that there are a lot of working ports along the St. Lawrence, not tourist towns.

Both Baie-Comeau and Sept-Iles revolve around timber, hydro-electric power generation and aluminum smelting, with Sept-Iles adding fishing to the list. More on that later on.

The availability of tours has been rather sparse this cruise because of the itinerary changes, although the communities, especially those that weren't expecting us in the first place, have stepped up as much as possible to be welcoming and point us toward sites of interest. We thought we'd had a tour in Baie-Comeau, but as we'd booked it just as the WiFi was going down, it turned out that there were no tickets for us.

So we took the shuttle from the port into town and wandered around for an hour or so. We had been here before about 10 years ago during a Quebec to New York cruise on Crystal Symphony, and we found that nothing much had changed. Although this time we did actually find 'downtown Baie-Comeau'. The most interesting site is the Amelie Church, which had been Catholic but had been de-consecrated at some point in its history and is now non-denominational. There's an Immaculate Conception grotto beyond the church that we don't recall from the previous visit, so we took a look there before returning to the ship.

You'll note that we didn't say anything about rain yet. We had a tiny sprinkle or two but it turned into a very nice afternoon and evening, nice enough that the Champagne and Caviar Sailaway could be held on the Pool Deck.

Later, much later that evening, we had our first dinner at The Grill by Thomas Keller, the main specialty dining venue on the ship. The room is quite small and is set up to look like a 1950s wood-paneled train car. We have had varying reports on the quality, especially of the signature Rib Eye Steak, but thought we would still have our own experience to see how it compared.

We started off with the table-side prepared Caesar Salad. Of course we had the poor soul who was preparing it on tenterhooks after we told him about our favourite Caesar Salad at The School....

It turned out to be delicious, but even with the extra garlic we asked for, nowhere near as potent as The School's.

For our main courses, we chose the two signature dishes - Larry had the Rib Eye Steak, and I had the Dover Soul Meuniere. The steak was, as expected, a very odd looking cut for a Rib Eye, but it was perfectly cooked and Larry found it quite tender. I found the sole very delicious as well.

My Dover Sole, deboned at the table

Larry's Rib Eye steak, along with our sides of Roesti Potato
Fries and Sauteed Mushrooms

The gelatos on board have been uniformly great, so Larry had that for dessert. I had the Meyer Lemon Meringue Tart, which was a nice small size and just the right tartness to finish off the meal.

The Meyer Lemon Meringue Tart

And instead of petits fours to finish off, they
bring larger-than-fist sized chocolate chip cookies!

We didn't do much else after dinner, and didn't have anything planned for this morning in Sept-Iles, so we could sleep in. 

In Sept-Iles, we decided that we needed to get out and take a walk since we had no tour this morning. After breakfast we put on our running shoes and set off. Sept-Iles is a larger town than we expected, but there isn't much of interest to tourists near the port. It was suggested that we follow the red brick path along the waterfront and it turned out to be a nice walk for a half-hour or so each way.

A couple of fishing boats in the harbour

There was a little menagerie of steel animals along
the waterfront path

So you can make your own postcard shot....

And one for the ticky-tacky tourist shot of your ship!

This is a restaurant/bar at the edge of the parking
lot that, in season, is where the fishermen sell
most of their catch. The restaurant (right) is
shaped like a lobster trap, although there's
no lobstering here.

There are informational signs posted all along, telling of the history of the area and the area's economy. After aluminum smelting and hydro-electric generation, fishing is a huge industry here. The main catches are snow crab, shrimp and turbot. And it must really be hopping in the height of the crabbing season given the number of traps we saw. All the fishing boats are out of the water now, and the hundreds of crab traps are piled up in a parking lot just off the pier.

Stored away for the winter, and this was just
a small sample of the crab traps piled
around the lot!

One of the snow crab boats in a yard with about 
50 others.

After a surprising send-off by the locals, we made our way out between the islands and toward Havre-Saint-Pierre.

This evening we went to The Colonnade for their Italian Dinner. The food was good, but there was certainly no taking your time over the meal like there is in other restaurants. I had the offerings from one side of the menu, the more traditional Italian items, and Larry had his dinner from the other.

The Colonnade set for dinner. They serve
buffet breakfast and lunch here.

Beef Carpaccio

Osso Bucco with Risotto

Tiramisu

After dinner, the Ensemble put on a Motown themed show that was really great. Tiffany had told us that it was one of their favourite shows to perform, and it was easy to see that.

We headed off to bed a little early as our tour in Havre-Saint-Pierre would be meeting at 7:50 a.m. and we still had to figure out how we would fit breakfast in beforehand.