MARITIMES CRUISE 2025
We asked our bellman to get us a taxi, and ended up waiting for 45 minutes before one finally showed up, and when it did, two arrived. Traffic was a mess that morning, and the 20 minute drive to the terminal took almost an hour as we crawled through the shipyards area. We finally arrived and could see our ship...
MAJESTIC PRINCESS
The "Majestic Princess" is a Royal-class cruise ship operated by Princess Cruises, it can carry 3,560 passengers in 1,780 staterooms. This is a much bigger ship than we have ever been on, but the stops in the Maritimes of Canada were something we had wanted to see for ages...
Day 1- Boston, MS
The Boston cruise port is situated at the Raymond L. Flynn Black Falcon Cruise Terminal, and it's name is almost as long as the waits we would have. It was a long line to drop your luggage off, and it was a huge line to get through security… it ended up taking us a couple hours to get through the security lines. We already had our Princess medallions so jumped into the Green Line and right on the ship.
The mandatory boarding the ship photo opp
After checking out our room, and it's amazing view from our deck, we explored the ship
a little to get our bearings, and our first buffet lunch samplings.The ship pulled away
from Boston Harbour while playing the Love Boat theme on the ships horns...
"Love, exciting and new. Come aboard, we're expecting you!"
Sailing away from Boston
We met up with everyone for dinner, and shared our ship boarding stories and complaints. The post dinner show was a Juggler… Yoiks. I really hope the shows get better than this.
Everybody else went back to their rooms, and Norine and I listened to the band and got some dance steps in before crashing.
Day 2- Portland, ME
Today's stop was historic Portland, Maine... famous for its lobster rolls
We woke up already in port, and after a hearty breakfast headed out into the town.
We had the crap scared out of us, as they are doing some historical re-enactment of a naval battle. It sounds like we are in the middle of a bombzone, and just when you think it's done, another cannon gets fired.
We walked along the main street and towards the first item of interest on my list, the Victoria Mansion, also known as the Morse-Libby House. This stately brownstone Italianate villa was completed in 1860 as a summer home for hotelier Ruggles Sylvester Morse. Morse had left Maine to make his fortune in hotels in New York, Boston and New Orleans. The building is recognized as one of the finest, and least-altered examples of a large Italianate brick/brownstone home in the United States.
Unfortunately for us, when we arrived, the guided tours for the morning were all booked up by those pesky Cruise Ship tours, and we weren't allowed to go in until much later in the afternoon. So we peaked through windows, used their bathrooms, and left.
There's no shortage of unique historical buildings in Portland, so we wound our way back down to the harbourfront area.
Being world famous for their lobster rolls, we had to go to the recommended Gilbert's Chowder House and have both a lobster roll and some chowder. When in New England, you must try the New England things. After feeling very full of lobster and seafood, Norine and I decided to go check out one of the nearby Fort Williams Park and the Portland Head Light, the rest of the crew headed back to the ship.
Portland Head has long protected Portland and the adjacent area. In 1776, the new Town of Cape Elizabeth posted a guard of eight soldiers at Portland Head to warn citizens of coming British attacks. In 1787, the state provided funding to build a lighthouse there. The original tower measured 72' from base to lantern deck and was lit with 16 whale oil lamps. It was first lit on January 10, 1791. By 1865, the tower was raised 20' and a 2nd order Fresnel lens was installed, this lens was in the lighthouse until 1958.
I had to take my phone off airplane mode and call an Uber to get back into town, as none of the buses were taking extra passengers, once again because of those pesky cruise ship passengers.
We wandered back through town, found a unique item for the Xmas Travel Tree, and got back on the ship before it set sail for Canadian waters.
We had dinner back on the ship with the gang. They weren’t happy with the table on the first night as it was in the middle of the kitchen traffic flow, and we ended up at a much nicer location at table 433, a separated room with windows on the ocean, and with a great waiter named Ivan and his assistant named Juliette. The waiter is now known to us as Romeo, he served us a great meal.
Tonight's show was called Fiera, a musical set in a carnival. Great singers and dancers.
The Piazza was hopping tonight with first the band and then a DJ. Fitting the 80's theme, we started drinking Harvey Wallbangers, and had great fun with the servers describing what it's called and what it is. For those of you that don't know, it's basically a screwdriver with Galiano added. Norine and I were up late dancing.
