Today we were in Saint John, New Brunswick (not to be confused with
St. Johns, Newfoundland!). It’s on the Bay of Fundy, which is
well-known for its extreme high and low tides (if you’ve seen the O
Canada movie at Epcot you might remember seeing boats floating at
high tide that are completely beached at low tide), though the tides
aren’t that bad here.

It was grey and foggy when we arrived – the forecast called for it
to clear up by lunch time, but unfortunately that never happened,
and it was foggy all day. 🙁

We moved into the Atlantic timezone last night, so we lost an hour.
Still, we were scheduled to be in port from 8:30-4:30, so that was
plenty of time. We slept in a bit and had breakfast (buffet) at
Parrot Cay before disembarking around 10:00.

The port building is downtown, so there’s plenty of places to walk
to. Lots of old buildings dating from the 1700s and 1800s.

There’s a very nice walking/cycling bath called the Harbour
Passage that goes along the edge of the Saint John Harbour and
out along the Saint John River towards one of the main tourist
attractions: Reversing Falls. The high tide in the Bay of
Fundy causes the current in the Saint John river to reverse, so the
flow of the rapids changes direction depending on the tide. It’s
not really a waterfall but a series of rapids.

It’s a couple of miles from the port, and was a very nice walk for
us, though it would have been a lot nicer on a clearer day. We
could only barely see the Disney Magic in the distance.

It was just past high tide when we got to the falls area, and we
could really see how fast the current was flowing.

The Reversing Falls area would be a lot more attractive if not for
this huge pulp and paper mill across the river! There wasn’t really
a lot to do there – there is viewing from the Reversing Falls
bridge, where the photo above was taken, and also from Fallsview
Park (photo below), which is another 1/2 mile or so up the river.
That’s where the jet boat tours are, and where the zip line is.

We went across the bridge to Wolastoq Park where there were a
number of statues of various historical figures (Benedict Arnold was
one!), including two that told a First People story about Koluskap
and the Giant Beaver. Thanks to him, beavers are much smaller now! 🙂

On our walk back we could see how much the water level had changed
in just a couple of hours – this area was under water when we walked
to the falls.

We wandered around the downtown area and visited a couple of parks
and the Trinity Church. There was a coffee place called the Java
Moose – the three girls working there were all wearing various kinds
of Mickey Mouse ears since our ship was in port. 🙂

And then there was this fabulous site, where, in 1897, nothing
happened. Wow. Who knew? 🙂 (Lee gets the credit for spotting this
sign!)

We didn’t have to be back on-board until 4:30, but by 2:30 we had
seen what we wanted to see…if it had been a nicer day there were
some other things we would have ventured out to see, like Rockwood
Park and the Carleton-Martello Tower, but with the fog, there wasn’t
a view of anything. Tonight when we left port, within about 5
minutes we couldn’t see anything around us but fog. 🙁

Since we were back early we decided to watch a movie in our
stateroom, and enjoyed that. Oh, while I’m thinking about it I
should say something about our stateroom…unlike most of our recent
cruises this stateroom has been very quiet – no creaking, banging,
vibrating or other bothersome aspects to it. It’s just a little bit
aft of mid-ship, so it’s a very convenient location, especially to the
restaurants. Though we still get plenty of exercise going up to
deck 9 for beverages and snacks several times a day!

Dinner tonight is in Animator’s Palate.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Hoping for better
weather there, though it looks like we might have fog again.

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