May Maasdam Ft Lauderdale to Montreal Cruise review Part 4A

Hi again,

Well we finished up yesterday with the Maasdam sailing out of Saquenacy Fjord and heading for the St Lawrence River and Quebec City. For those of you who are noticing this post for the first time let me start out with praise for the Maasdam and her crew. The ship was in great shape both interior and exterior and we didn't see any problems during our cruise except for an occasional elevator problem that never caused us any problems. `The crew was friendly and helpful as ever especially the Indonesian and Filipino waiters, waitresses and room stewards. We also had a very good captain who communicated with us regularly. If you read other sections of the review you will read my opinion on the shore and excursion staff. The food and wine on the cruise were all excellent both in the regular dining room, the Lido and the Pinnacle Grill. Our cabin, A057, was really nice and we especially enjoyed and used the verandah a lot. Now on to the next stop Quebec City.

We had been contacted several weeks prior to our cruise by our TA that we were going to be receiving a free half day tour during our stop in Quebec as part of the benefits for booking the cruise through their agency, Vacations-to-go. Evidently they pick several people each month for this extra benefit and after 6 cruises with them it was our turn. The actual tour was provided through something called Giantstravel and the firm doing the tour was a company called Select Travelers Escorted Tours. We also got a free hour cocktail party earlier in the cruise one evening before dinner where we met our host Faith Kaplan, a very nice and friendly lady.

Anyway the result of all this was we had our morning in Quebec planned so we went to breakfast early in the Lido to be ready to leave for our tour at 8:15 gathering in the Explorers lounge. We brought our name tags from the cocktail party and had our names checked off on the list. There were about 45 people going and we left the ship around 8:30 to board two buses and begin our tour of Quebec. We visited the Place Royal, Cap Diamond, the Plains of Abraham, Dufferin Terrace and the Chateau Frontenac. We then got back into the buses again and drove along the river to Manior Montmorency for a morning snack of cake and coffee. From there we were able to walk along a scenic walkway to view Montmorency Falls which are actually higher than Niagara Falls in NY state. We then took the gondola ride down from the cliffs down to the parking lot to reboard the buses for another drive across the bridge to the Island of Orleans. We then visited the Sugar Shack for a taste of fresh maple sugar candy before returning to the ship around 1:30.

We decided to continue to tour the lower city of Quebec on our own. We wandered around the scenic area where there are many souvenir shops as well as other shops carrying higher quality merchandise. We had seen the cable cars (elevator?), I can't remember the French word for it, that provide an easier way to get to upper city when we were on the tour and found the station in the lower city and returned to the upper city to take in the sites up there with a little more free time. We wandered around the upper city until a little after 4 when we decided it was about time to find our way back down. We had wandered to a park on the one side of the old upper city and found the stairs leading down so we came down that way. Coming down isn't near as hard as going up would have been. The whole area both upper and lower city were very crowded because this was the beginning of a holiday weekend for Canada and the province of Quebec so tourists were there from both other countries and other parts of Canada.

Quebec is the last walled fortified city left in North America that has retained most of its walls and many of its gates. It is someplace I wish we had more time to visit but we saw a lot in our short visit and hope to return for a longer visit some time in the future.

Once back on the ship we checked the daily program and noticed the cheese and wine party on the rear deck on departure and decided to join the festivities. Once we got out on deck we noticed our whole table of dinner mates had found a place with seats and we found two chairs and joined them enjoying a little wine and cheese as we pulled away from Quebec City. Unfortunately the sun was directly behind the city as we pulled away so the pictures I took weren't as good as the ones I got when we were docking in the morning but I was still out there taking pictures as we pulled away from Quebec.

As moved up the St Lawrence the wind picked up and it got a little cold out on deck so we all decided to split up and meet again for supper in a couple of hours in the dining room. This would be our last night together as a table and everyone wanted to be there for one last nice meal together.

Unfortunately ships usually don't schedule the best menus for the last night of a cruise and tonight was not an exception. Everyone found something to order and I don't thing anyone walked away hungry but a better choice of menus on the last night might be something HAL might want to think about. We all had prepared cards with our addresses and email addresses to share with our tablemates which I think shows how much we all enjoyed our cruise together. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend any of my tablemates to anyone and I would jump at another choice to share a cruise with any of them. After dinner we all returned to our cabins to finish packing so we could put out our luggage to be picked up. It is always a fun time as you try to make sure that you have something to wear the next morning and have something to wear to put the luggage out in the hall. After we did that we checked the view from the verandah but the wind and cold drove us back inside rapidly. We spent another night of sleep in our cabin and woke up to the ship its procedures to dock in Montreal.

I am splitting up the original review because of the new 10000 character limit to any post. Part 4B hopefully will cover our stay in Montreal and trip home.