After our time in Paris, our riverboat set sail for our first port of call, Poissy. From there we took a bus to the Palace of Versailles. Both the Palace and the Gardens are a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Walking to the Palace entrance, we were struck by the beauty of the gates and fencing surrounding the Palace. The gilded gates were originally built to impress guests and emphasize the grandeur of the monarchy. The gold leaf was a sign…
Our bus tour in Paris took us to the Palais Garnier, Paris’ opera house. It was the setting for the movie, Phantom of the Opera. The opera house is famous for its opulent common rooms designed to impress high society. When we visited, preparation for a performance was in progress so we could only visit the common areas and could not enter the auditorium. Pictured below is the ceremonial stairway. It is made of multicolored marble and splits into two…
We took Tauck’s “Impressions from the Seine” tour traveling from Paris to Normandy. We arrived a day early and stayed at the Hotel Lutetia, a beautiful hotel with an interesting history. During World War II, when Germany occupied Paris, the Nazis seized the Hotel and repurposed it as the headquarters for the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was chief of the Abwehr and unknown to many, opposed the Nazis and used his position to sabotage Hitler’s…
Our tour next took us to Montreal, Quebec. Walking in the area near our hotel, we found that public art is important in the community. The first picture below is called “The Ring.” It was installed in 2002. The ring itself is a curved tube, weighing 50,000 pounds. The ring is 90 feet in diameter. When looked through at a certain angle, it focuses one’s attention on structures important in Montreal’s history. Another art piece we saw is part of…
We were next headed to Ottawa, but on the way we stopped for a cruise among the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence River. The Thousand Islands actually consists of 1,864 islands within both Canada and the United States. To be considered an island, the land must be above water all year and support at least one tree. We began our cruise near the town of Rockport, a village that is about 200 years old. The first picture below is…
We began our Tauck Canadian Capitals tour in Toronto, the provincial capital of Ontario. We have visited Toronto a few times before. On our last trip (Cruising the Great Lakes), one of our stops was the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). There is a picture of the exterior of the museum above the blog title and you will see a large crystal structure on the exterior of the building. This is named The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal in recognition of a financial…
We left Prince Edward Island and traveled back to Nova Scotia. We stayed on Cape Breton Island at the Keltic Lodge. It was set on beautiful grounds within Cape Breton Highlands National Park. As we walked the grounds, we were treated to beautiful scenery and also saw several lobster boats setting and retrieving their traps. These are pictures taken at Keltic Lodge. These pictures were taken at a quick photo stop at Black Brook, part of Cape Breton Highlands National…
Before we left Nova Scotia for Prince Edward Island (PEI), we learned a little about the First Nations people, especially the Mi’kmaq. For a long time, their stories were passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth. A missionary, Reverend Silas Tertius Rand, spent about 40 years with the Mi’kmaq and other First Nations people, making one of the first written recordings of some of their stories and legends. The Mi’kmaq people believed that Glooscap was the…
A highlight of our Maritimes trip was visiting the Bay of Fundy where we could walk on the ocean floor at low tide. Tides are caused by gravitational forces exerted on the earth by the moon and to a lesser extent, the sun. Fundy’s tides are the highest in the world in part because of the funnel-shape of the bay which forces the water into a smaller space. At its fastest, the water level rises 13 feet in an hour….
We also explored a few sites near Halifax. We first headed to Lunenburg by way of Mahone Bay. The town of Mahone Bay has just over 1,000 people. It is a fishing village and a well-known tourist destination. Pictures of three churches along the bay, similar to the one below, are popular photographs on postcards. We also saw colorful homes. The paint used for these homes may have been left from the paint families used for their fishing boats. We…