Carnival Cruise to Canada

I was lucky enough to go on the Maryland Library Association's cruise to Saint John, New Brunswick and Halifax, Nova Scotia. We took a coach from Harford County and boarded in time for lunch in the Mediterranean Restaurant on deck nine, Lido. I thought at the time that I would never stoop so low as to walk around with soft serve frozen yogurt. Little did I know...
After lunch, we heard Eloisa James discuss her schizophrenic career as a Shakespeare scholar and lecturer and her success as a romance writer. She was funny and thought provoking.
We sailed out of New York City and left under extremely foggy conditions. We were glad to hear the fog horns from our stateroom balcony but a little disturbed to recognize that the soft tunes being piped into the deck five common area sounded an awful lot like the theme from Titanic.
On Sunday, we spent some quality time in the Black and Red Sea Lounge or as Michael Gannon called it, the floating brothel.
Storytelling from the Field: Unusual Library Experiences explored prison librarianship- Gleaner Shirley and Shirley Smith told us about their experiences in the Maryland Correctional Library, Carol Carman shared her experiences working in the Maryland Department of Legislative Services and Louise LeTendre shared her experiences as an Army Librarian in Vietnam and currently at Aberdeen Proving Ground.
Next, Michael Gannon had us laughing with Love and Death on the High Seas - A Readers' Advisory.
That night, we attended the Captain's Party and formal dinner. We librarians cleaned up nicely. We had a wonderful dinner.
The next day was sunny and our Monday and Tuesday shore excursions to Saint John and Halifax was the best weather the Atlantic Provinces has seen all summer. (Perry, our tour guide to Peggy's Cove told us so.) On Monday, I went on a small group tour of Saint John with Lance Timmons, a professional photographer and teacher who helped us improve our skills with his top photography tips. He also shared interesting facts about Saint John. His web site is
www.timmonsphotography.com
Remembering Lance's tips, I tried to be arty on our tour of Peggy's Cove, in Halifax the next day. You can see my stunning photo of the lighthouse at Peggy's Cove. Halifax is an interesting city with a lot of stories. More on that later.