Bar Harbor

We have been changing our clock and watches so often that we are not sure where we are relating to Seattle. We think that we are finally back to Eastern Standard Time. Of course, tomorrow night we go to Daylight Savings Time, but that should be the last change before we head home.

Bar Harbor is a tender port. A tender port is one that does not have a pier large enough for a cruise ship. The ship anchors in the bay and the tenders (lifeboats) shuttle us into town. The ship has small ‘docks’ that they attach to the ship near the waterline via a large doorway. Then the tenders are lowered from the sides of the ship and tie up to the docks and the passengers are loaded onto the tenders. Even on a good day like today, there is some rising and lowering of the tender, so care must be exercised stepping onto and off the tender. On one of our previous trips, a tablemate whacked her head and on another trip, a passenger broke a leg. The seas were too rough for us to tender in to our first port, Corner Brook, so we skipped it, but it was smooth today.

We went ashore around 9am and walked around the town until 11:30. The downtown area is quite small with a Main Street of about five blocks and two side streets of two blocks or so. It didn’t take long to visit the shops. We had originally signed up for a ship excursion that was a jet powered catamaran tour of the lighthouses of Mount Desert Island, where Bar Harbor is located. We canceled it after the first few days of cold, thinking it would both wet and cold. When we saw the size of the catamaran, we knew we would have been OK, if we had gone ahead with it. We decided to take a local bus tour that was very similar to one the ship offered for $49.00 each. The local tour cost $25.00 each! Princess marks the excursions up quite a bit, which we knew. We toured Acadia National Park, the oldest National Park east of the Mississippi River. Another really pretty area of the country.

Until next time from Boston and Salem on Halloween.
John & Colleen