St. John, New Brunswick

King of the World - St. John, originally uploaded by quimerizar.

Tuesday October 16

Today we arrived in St. John, New Brunswick. New Brunswick was pretty cool when getting off the ship. At each port, there were always people standing around when you got off the ship to give you directions, set up excursions, and take your picture. But this one was different. All of the women were given roses - they had all kinds of different colors. And, all of the men were given a New Brunswick pin.

After arriving, we headed to the center of town to a shopping area. We really didn't know what we were doing - except that we wanted to get a car. At the shopping center we saw people from the ship - I immediately knew that they were from the cruise because a) I recognized some of them, b) the women had roses, and c) they were older than dirt. I found it amusing that they disembarked the ship, headed to the first shopping center with a food court and a cafe, and proceeded to sit down and have their daily over 70 coffee chat club. Here they are in some different place that they paid a lot of money to go to and they want to go and make conversation over coffee at the first place they come across.

The one rental car agency in town had already rented out all of there cars. So, 411 had one other option - Rent-A-Wreck. We know how it sounded, but it was our only chance at getting a car for the day. Of course, they had cars available and the man was on his way down to meet us with a minivan in no time.

After we met up with him, we had to drive him back to the Rent A Wreck site to fill out paperwork and drop him off. I believe it was on this trip that we started discussing one of our waitresses - Ishy. That was her name - it was short for something else but I can't remember what it was. Ishy had been working on the cruise ship for several years and was telling us about how she was ready to go back to Trinidad and open a restaurant. She had been doing the typical cruise ship work - 6 months on, two months off. And when I say six months on - its SIX MONTHS ON - 7 days a week. She wants to open a cafe or a bistro or something similar. Not sure exactly how we got on the subject, but Kenny, Dad and Ron had been making a play on words on her name ever since we learned it. It was - IS SHE our waitress? IS SHE bringing us more wine? IS SHE a nice girl? So naturally, in the car they were making the play on words again and were trying to help her come up with a name for her restaurant. They came up with "IS SHE the cook" - which we all agreed was pretty good. But then, I was remembering that she wanted to do a cafe. So, I thought a "cook" isnt the right name for the proprietor of a cafe and decided that "IS SHE the Barista" was a better name. We presented our idea later to her at dinner. She said she really liked it (but then again, maybe she just wanted a good tip - but she seemed genuine). Even if she didn't like it, she humored us and was very gracious.

After getting the car in order, we started heading up a road to some remote park that was going to take a long time to get to - we ended up thinking this through and decided that we wouldn't be able to see much of anything else if we made the 45 minute trip. So, we turned the car around and headed back to town Irving National Park was to be our next stop. HOWEVER, it was not our next stop. We stopped several times before finally getting to the park. I think we got lost and turned around about 10 times before finally stopping a local to ask for directions. He was a true Canadian - had the whole lingo down to a T. "Well, youe just goh up this road, 'eh. Then youe make a left, 'eh. Follow that down to the corner, 'eh." I think we were all so amused with his accent that we barely paid attention to what he was really telling us. So, we made a wrong turn two more times but then eventually found it.

Iriving National Park was wonderful. It had this nice little dirt road for the minivan since we didn't really have much time to hike around and see things. We made our first stop and hiked about 20 feet in, arriving at a rocky beach overlooking the harbor. The smell of the pine trees was infiltrating. So much so that Ron insisted on having a picture of himself sniffing one. He then broke off a piece and stole it out of the forest. FELONY. He's definitely going to jail. Dad became interested in all the shells and began picking them up. He stole some of those too. FEOLONY number two. What is with these criminals???

We posed for some nice pictures and then headed on our way. We made a few more stops - slightly disappointed that the leaves really hadn't changed as much as they should have due to the unseasonably warm fall. After the park, we decided to head over to the town's claim to fame - the Reversing Falls. The story goes something like this (and don't fault me if I get it part wrong, I am going only off of memory here and not actually making my lazy ass look it up on the internet so I can get it RIGHT). The tide comes in to the harbor area there through a small channel into the river. The river normally flows out to the ocean, but during the tide, the incoming current is so strong that it actually pushes the river backwards and creates a reversing falls. To be honest with you - you could kind of see it happening but the tide takes a long time to come in and it is pretty subtle - especially when standing from a viewing point a few hundred feet above sea level. About 15 minutes of watching it was really all I could handle - and it only was that long because there was a boat in the river that kept purposefully going into the falls and spinning around (otherwise I think about 2 minutes would have done it for me). Put this on the list of things I have seen in my life.

Later that day, our group learned about the waste on board the ship. Leave it to us to ask the really nitty gritty (shitty) questions at dinner. "So, what happens to all the shit? Does it go into the ocean?" For those of you who really want to know, the answer is no. It's pretty much like this - Brown goes down, yellow is mellow (I got that from Party of Five- the popular TV show in the 90s). Meaning, they kind of filter their septic tanks, then have the tough stuff cleaned out at each port. The rest goes into the water.