Catlover54

Day 5, Quebec City part 2 The CD came on the loudspeaker at 8AM (heard only in the hall after the bell , or if you turn the TV on to the bow camera), to give a short speech about QC . He also noted that at 4:30 the navigation officers will discuss the impacts and challenges that Fiona had on this voyage. Finally he reminded that there is a show tonight with young singer Jo Rochell (described as "one of the UK's leading piano bar entertainers." All this information was also in the Daily Herald, which I am happy to receive in paper form each evening, per my request. Tomorrow we will be in Saguenoy. One excursion is posted on SB Source, a trip to a scenic park. Weather is getting a bit wet, so it may be a good day for some museums. We hope to, among others, get into this "Museum of Bad Art" (art "so bad it has to be seen"): I'm not sure how much street art, always a delightful aspect of walking in QC, will be out today in the drizzle (some from yesterday): Not far from QC is also a copper museum and family run center for copper craftsmanship: A bit outside QC, the beautiful Basilica of Sainte Anne de Beaupre's copper adorned door (posted earlier on this thread) was also created by that same family, and has an interesting history. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré

We have the same interest

Once again, dinners (yesterday, escargots and sea bream in Colonnade on French night, and tonight coq au vin chef special in The Restaurant) have been very good. The addictive crispy French baguette with sweet butter continues to threaten the integrity of my 'girlish' figure (😳). Unfortunately The Restaurant has remained closed at lunch, so we will have an early heavy lunch off the ship in a highly regarded French restaurant before more touring, to take care of both breakfast and lunch needs (other than my mandatory morning coffee). The stewardess is much improved (no more removal and hiding of my personal items), and is researching with her supervisor whether or not a Nespresso machine could be found for me. The SB website indicates Nespresso machines are only available in the "Owner's Suite and above" (it says nothing about any veranda suites having them) but maybe they can still make it happen if there is a stray lying around. Tonight's scheduled entertainment was "Let's Dance!" Entertainment crew and the band inspired about 20 or so septuagenerians, including a couple with hearing aids, to gyrate to songs such as Abba's "Give Me Give Me Give Me a Man After Midnight" and "Gonna get some hot stuff baby tonight." It was indeed entertaining, and the band and singers (including the CD, who did an Elvis number) are quite talented.

Glory: Montmarcy Falls near QC: (people can walk on a bridge over them)

Fauna: (this and latest courtesy DH)

Flora: (margarites)

We are starting to get a bit of fall colour:

See post #63 (picture of the new port list) and #70 I posted ( DH's graph/comparison of the old and new). The obvious idea is to avoid the Atlantic and where Fiona causes trouble. It makes sense -- we had beautiful weather today, though a little rain is forecast.

Day 4, Quebec City Quebec City ( QC ) welcomed the Quest early today. We will be here until tomorrow night. It is Sunday and thus relatively quiet in the shopping districts. For those who have not been here, it is a very photogenic walkable city, especially if you are ok with some hills (and is also a great place for foodies:)). Paw prints are always a good sign: We got lucky with the weather:

Self-portrait of DH in hot tub in bow of deck 6.

It is open for breakfast 8-9. So far (including today), it is closed for lunch (we are now docked in Quebec City). So lunch venues are the pool deck (burger, hamburger, fish of the day, salad bar) or the Colonnade buffet (plus the option to order a simple entree like a burger or grilled fish while sitting down), or of course room service. I don't know if The Restaurant will be open sea days (SB Source only gives you one day of restaurant at a time). Pre-Covid, at least on some ships, it was open for lunch for an hour, and on others I was on (Caribbean, Australia) it was closed at lunch even on sea days, except for a very special galley's lunch . Generally there frankly were very few people who wanted a quiet, calm, full-service sit-down, formal lunch (as we did when there was no excursion, to get away from the din and overstressed staff in the Colonadde at lunch, especially when weather was too wet to sit outside). It had previously been explained to us that a better use of SB staff is to put them elsewhere during that time, give them off time, etc., i.e., as one of several F&B things that help with cost-cutting in the long run.

French bread or baguette, when they have it, with sweet butter.

No Nespresso machines on Quest veranda suites. I am glad to hear they are on the Venture. I have been disappointed in coffee at SB Square, as has DH, though I know others love it. It is strange (maybe it is just that I like my coffee very, very strong. Maybe I am going at the wrong time. I also don't like going early in the morning and listening to the loud blasts of the machines and at the same time looking at a bunch of sleepy unhappy facies of the people waiting (or worse, listening to chatty people that early in the morning). Some of us just need caffeination first thing in the morning before we become civilised. We had a Venture cruise booked in a nice layout PH that would have started in St. Johns, done a couple Canadian maritime ports, then Bermuda (never been) , and then ending in Caribbean. Instead (likely due to Omicron furor) it morphed into just starting in St. John's, skipping the maritime ports, and then hightailing it to the Caribbean and spending all the time there, so we canceled (been there, done that, and I was not interested in wearing masks on excursions in high humidity heat, as the hot moisture triggers my asthma). But we hope to try out the Venture at some point.

Team Retha/Lucy. Retha (the main person) now knows better, because talked to her. A reminder when you board would not hurt, of course. I am sure she meant well.

DH and I look forward to the new ports, as we have not been to them. Looking out our window, at the clear blue sky and minimal wind, you would not think that not that far away, there is such a mess.

". . . . Even the pool deck looks beautiful . . . until the passengers arrive and mess it all up, lounging in their various stages of decomposition, slathering themselves with toxic chemicals, gulping down 42 percent alcoholic beverages, gorging on huge platefuls of saturated fats, glued to their smartphones or tablets.. . ." LOL! But for the decomposing pax, there would of course be no point to the existence of a pool deck in the first place, and the chemicals being slathered on are designed to help slow, no matter how slightly, the dreaded decomposition. And as for the smartphones or tablets, we all know they are using them to read threads about SB voyages on CC. 🙂 But I hear you . . . . BTW, I agree to stay away from the Alhambra in the modern era.

Both the pool grill area and the Colonnade were very busy for lunch. We tried the latter, Mexican food was the theme in there today. I tried the beef fajitas (fine), tacos (ok), refried beans (excellent), rice (fine), and shrimp ceviche (it was basically just a couple thawed shrimp with a lemon slice, on a little greenery) -- I would pick everything except the ceviche again, if very hungry. Everything went quickly and smoothly, except for our beverage order, which arrived when we were done eating (one of the disadvantages of an efficient buffet). I eyed the hamburgers and mahi mahi special others ordered, and they looked pretty good (noted for future reference), and once again the salad bar looked nice, and fresh. Vegetarians and pescatarians should have no problems on the Quest.

DH created a new map showing the original cruise ports in black, and the new "gimme shelter" ports in red (to complement my post #63, which shows our new list) We are of course disappointed to miss 2 days in St. John's (and our expensive private photo tour there), and the other Newfoundland ports. Prior to booking this cruise to use our credits, we had booked a cruise on the Venture which would have included St. John's this year , (we have not yet been on the Venture), but that didn't work out either.

Excursion: "Hiking the Les Cascades Trail" Next we did our rescheduled excursion to a very nice nature enclave ( Mauricie Park). We were transported by an aged and somewhat bumpy school bus with very tight pitch upright seating (that's all that is available locally) , but fortunately we had room overhead for our packs and the trip was only an hour each way. Only a few leaves were turning in the park (we are too early in the season) but the loop walk, though shorter than the expected 2 hours in the brochure, was still invigorating (2.5 miles, 10 stories total elevation). It was paved part of the way, then had a series of stairs and dirt, with a few areas with rocks and roots. I rate the difficulty moderate. We had a warning when we started the hike, but fortunately we had no ursine encounters:

Day 3, Trois Rivieres againA beautiful, crisp morning dawned and it was warm enough that the early breakfast room service (which arrived 15 minutes after the requested 15 minute time range)could easily have been eaten on our pleasant sunny veranda pre-excursion.We had ordered one egg with an order of bacon as one entree, coffee, 1 bread basket, 1 grapefruit juice, 1 yoghurt and an order of Swedish pancakes.The waiter delivered four eggs instead of one, with bacon orders to match on two entree plates, plus the entree plate of pancakes ( so three entrees) , plus the other items. The tray was so overflowing that the bread basket (and what turned out to be its rockhard contents ) cascaded to the floor as soon as the waiter came in. After he left we realized there was only 1 coffee cup and no cream for the coffee, but since it was clear the waiter was stressed, we just let it go (as well as bread replacement) and prepared for our excursion. We will try and be more explicit and limited on future room service orders (if any) to avoid confusion and potential waste of food, and when we don't have early excursions, we will just eat breakfast elsewhere, order something cold to stash the night before, or skip it if the other venues are not yet open and/or if we don't feel like going public early in the day. The Restaurant offers table service breakfast 8-9, the Colonnade offers it 7:30-10, and the Patio offers it 8-9:30, none of which work for early excursions. A pleasant surprise was that the room service coffee this time was drinkable and so was the grapefruit juice, even though it was not fresh-squeezed but from a frozen mix. It would be nice to have an in-room coffee or nespresso machine, like we had on Silversea, Hapag-Lloyd, Crystal Endeavor, in the base veranda suite, but I was not realistically expecting one.

The show at 9:30 was packed with eager customers, and the Ohio-born singer Suzanne O Davis, wearing a beautiful colorful partially sparkling dress, enthusiastically sang Tapestry Carole King covers, accompanied by the ship musicians ( guitar, sax, keyboard, drums). Our stewardess apologized for her overly exuberant cleanup history and she readily agreed to stop removing our things going forward . Markham, I did not want to go straight to the HD ( and maybe get her into trouble) without first giving her a chance to make things right. DH had his birthday, and SB had the dining room staff make a chocolate cake, and also had the stewardess drop off a bottle of wine ( though nothing special, as it was from the complimentary list which we can order any time, $15 retail, it was nice to have recognition). She also hung Happy Birthday decorations in the room. The cake was very good, but big, so the wait staff said they would send the rest to our suite. We planned to eat the rest after the show, but sadly it never arrived.Lesson learned was to bring your own leftovers to your suite. I have previously done special celebrations on SB, and they have always come through with the decorations and preparing a special dessert.

It is a beautiful sunny day (still in Trois Rivieres), but more on that later. Dinner in the Restaurant (MDR) , open 7-9, offered the menu shown below last night, and it was very good (almost up there with our TK dinner the night before).We came at 7:05, and were seated after standing in a short line. We finished our third course, dessert, at 9:05, in time to rest a little (all that eating is exhausting !) and then go to the show, which started at 9:30. We were very happy with all of our food (salmon appetizer, beet appetizer, Asian duck, and chicken cordon bleu). Service was very slow and a bit disjointed ( e.g., 40 minutes to get the appetizers, but fortunately the wonderful perfect crispy baguette pieces (the best bread I have had on the ship) and the SB famous breadsticks, plus the wine we brought, kept us going while waiting for the first course.The only thing we disliked was the homemade SB faux “ sparkling water” which did not sparkle, was lukewarm, and tasted odd (this is not new post-Covid, I had just forgotten about the now not so new homemade sparkling substitute on SB). However, when we asked for normal bottled sparkling water to replace it , it was easily done, within 15 minutes.

Today: (formal night -- looks like the old Sir Tim Rice show is planned) And the new itinerary: (actually we do NOT get in early, we still terminate 10/4 as originally planned, we just have another day in Montreal)

We will have a firm but polite talk with the stewardess and also leave written instructions in case she has 'help' which cross-pollinates. On the bright side, many of yesterday's unfilled requests were filled: we got our diet coke, and sparkling water. We had asked for the pre-cruise ordered bottle of Baileys, and we did not get that on arrival, but instead today got a substitute (which costs less than half of Baileys retail, and tastes accordingly). Oddly, we had asked for all the beer to be removed from our fridge yesterday (which it was), as we told the stewardess we do not drink beer and wanted space in the fridge for other things. However, today, our fridge was stacked with 6 new cans of beer (though a different brand), so we will again ask for them to be removed. Hopefully the room issues will get straightened out by mid-cruise or maybe sooner, and we look forward to the excursion tomorrow. DH is enjoying one of the hot tubs (his favorite is in the bow of deck 6) instead of going to the gym (the excuse is that we walked about 6 miles a day in Montreal, much of which was on hills, and 4 miles today in Trois Riveieres, plus we only had a very light hot dog lunch) 🙂 There is also a show tonight (9:30) with a woman doing Carole King covers. Internet in the cabin was useless for us in the afternoon (spinning gears due to overload at a popular time) , as was LTE/5G, but as was the case on Quest and Odyssey several times in the past, it was decent in SB Square (the only annoying thing there is the constant overhead assorted pop music, but for that I have earplugs). The ship does not seem crowded, but I am not sure what the head count is -- if anyone is on board and knows, please advise! Masks are not required anywhere (in or out) except in the medical center, though they are officially "recommended" (optional) and 2 thin surgi-maks were available in the cabin on boarding for mask-loving pax who forgot to bring anything. Staff wear masks, though they are not uncommonly below the snoot. I would say 95% or so of pax have chosen not to wear masks, and no one is sniffling or coughing (yet). So far, the F&B other than in TK, and service, are not at all as good as in the past, but it is early, and of course the main reason we cruise is for the itinerary (good F&B are just bonuses).