Voyage of the Vikings Redux - Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada

Cruise Day 4

Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Today we are in Sydney, Nova Scotia in Canada.  

We were here in 2016 (link) and rented a car and explored Cape Breton Island, but today we took a ship excursion called “Baddeck on Your Own”.  Baddeck is a small town on Cape Breton Island, where we were taken by bus and then given a few hours to wander around and explore on our own.

Today's port is Sydney, Nova Scotia (red marker upper right).

Today we'll travel from Sydney (red marker on right) to Baddeck on Cape Breton Island (red marker on left).

The weather forecast was for an unusually warm day in the area with temperatures reaching the high eighties.  We were up at 7:30 and could already feel the heat.  This is highly unusual for this area; the last time we were here it was cool and foggy.  After getting ready and getting a quick breakfast in the Neptune Lounge, we were off the ship and on our bus.

We sale into Sydney.

It was a large bus, and every seat was filled, almost every tour on this cruise is sold out.  We had hoped it would be a small group, but that was not the case.  The drive to Baddeck took over an hour due to some road construction, but we were entertained by our local guide who had many interesting stories to tell as well as a knowledge of the local history.

The bus made one stop for us to get out and get a view of St. Ann's Bay; the other side is Cape Breton Island.  The strip of land running across the bay is a road, but it doesn't actually go all the way across and to get across you have to take a short ferry ride on the Englishtown Ferry.  Val and I did that in 2016 as we wanted to visit the north end of the of the island, but today we are going further inland and the bus will be crossing the bay via bridge.

Baddeck is a very small, picturesque town and we found out that Alexander Graham Bell lived here during his retirement years.  He may have been retired, but he was still very busy coming up with new ideas and projects.  There is a museum dedicated to him in the town and that’s where the bus dropped us off.  Baddeck is located on Bras d'Or Lake, a large lake that is actually connected by inlets to the ocean.

Val and I decided to visit the museum and found it very interesting.  We didn’t realize it, but Bell designed airplanes while he was there rivaling the Wright Brothers and they had several of his primitive (by our current standards) planes on display.  What was more surprising was that he designed hydrofoil boats and tested them in the bay.  He didn’t actually test them himself, but his wife, Mabel, did, which surprised us.  They also had several of his old hydrofoil boats on display.  We really enjoyed our visit to the museum but had to cut it short as, because of the highway construction, our time in Baddeck was going to be a little shorter.

One of the hydrofoils that Bell designed and tested on Bras d'Or Lake.  Surprisingly, he never drove the hydrofoil, his wife Mabel did.

One of the airplanes Bell designed and built while living in Baddeck.

On the right is another of the hydrofoils Bell designed and built.

After we finished we walked down into the town.  This is the museum looking up from the main road.

From the museum we walked down into town and along the bay on a boardwalk they have.  As I said, it is very picturesque, but it was quite warm with more humidity than we were used to (but nothing like our visits to Africa or South America though).  It was getting near lunch time, and we were hungry and anxious to get out of the sun, so it was time to look for a place to eat.

There were nice views of the harbor from the boardwalk.

 

Val and I took turns getting our picture taken with the Bells.

 

Val had read about a restaurant with very good reviews online called The Freight Shed and it was right on the water, so we decided to eat there.  It’s a small town so it didn’t take us long to find it, but it looked like a lot of other people had read the reviews and it took us a while to be seated.

The Freight Shed Restaurant where we had lunch.

We got some good seats on the patio with views of the harbor, and we had an excellent lunch.  Val had some fresh salmon and bagels, and I had a plate of scallops with a bowl of seafood chowder.  They were both very good.

We had a nice table on the patio with great views of the harbor.

Unfortunately, due to the long time it took to get seated and served, by the time we had finished it was time to head back to the bus.  We would have liked to stay longer and explore the town more, but because of the construction delays getting here and the same one getting back, we had to go.

The Zuiderdam looks a lot larger from the dock than it does when you're on board.

Newfoundland and particularly Cape Breton Island is known for it's Celtic traditional music and this iconic giant fiddle at the terminal honors that tradition.

The ride back was equally interesting as our guide had many more stories to tell about life here and his own experiences.  When we got back to the ship we wandered through the shops that were on the pier before boarding the ship.  It was mid-afternoon and we spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing.

We were due to sail away around 5:00 PM so I went up on the rear Lido Deck for that and found that it was still quite hot.  Standing out on deck in the sun got a little uncomfortable, but when we actually started moving, there was a little breeze blowing that helped a lot.  Val was smarter and stayed in the shade of our balcony.

We sail away from Sydney.

One last look at Sydney as we head out to sea.

We did our usual dinner and casino routine, but we didn’t get back to the room until almost 10:30 as we spent quite a bit of time in the casino.  Tonight, we will have the unusual experience of the clocks being moved forward thirty minutes as we will be in Newfoundland tomorrow and they are a half hour ahead of Nova Scotia.