Maasdam Review

4.0 / 5.0
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Eastern Canada with HAL

Review for Canada & New England Cruise on Maasdam
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janeaustenruns
First Time Cruiser • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Jun 2008
Cabin: Large Interior Stateroom
Traveled with children

We just completed a great summer family vacation to New England and Eastern Canada on the MS Maasdam. We added a week land tour of New York and Boston and points in between before our June 21st departure on the MS Maasdam from Boston to Montreal. We started our tour in New York and then drove up to Boston, with stops in West Point, Hyde Park, Mystic, and Newport, RI. In Boston, we stayed at the Newbury Guest House in the Back Bay area. This is a restored 100-year old plus hotel which is in a great area for walking and sightseeing. The hotel is quite nice, but their continental breakfast is disappointing. Be sure to check your bill when you leave and confirm the room rates--they charged us higher room rates than those that were on our original reservation. Despite all this, their location is great. Getting aboard in Boston was OK, marred only by longer than usual waits (despite pre-registering on the internet). The Maasdam is laid like most of the HAL ships. The food and service was excellent. This is our 5th HAL cruise and the Maasdam's service and cuisine was certainly up to HAL's usual high standards. Because we are so accustomed to HAL, there was really nothing we were dissatisfied with. This is the first HAL cruise in which we did not do a single excursion offered by HAL. With a family of 5, it is a much better value to do a private tour or rent a car. Because of a schedule change, we were assigned 'open' dining. We liked the flexibility in a way, but really do prefer the fixed seating. Having the same waiter for your entire cruise is such a plus--they really get to know you and do serve you better. Also, you are more likely to connect with other passengers if you sit in the same area for every dinner. After a beautiful sail away from Boston, we proceeded North: 1) Bar Harbor, ME. We took a great taxi tour here from "At Your Service Taxi Company". The owner, Clare Bingham, did an excellent job driving us around Acadia National Park and showing us the major sites. 2) Halifax, NS. We arranged an excellent half-day taxi tour from Your Cab (Jonathan Duru). We did a Halifax city tour with stops at the Public Garden, Titanic graves, etc., and then drove to Peggy's Cove, with a lunch stop. Jonathan is an excellent tour guide and even introduced us to a real lobster fisherman. 3) Sydney, Nova Scotia. We obtained a rental car from Budget Rent A Car. Their office is about a 10 minute taxi drive from the pier ( too far to walk). We drove to Fort Louisbourg, which is quite worthwhile. This is a national historic site for Canada and has many interesting aspects. Our boys enjoyed the historic military demonstration, which included firing of muskets and cannon. We talked to some other passengers who took shore excursions that were more scenic drive oriented and did not seem as happy with those. Sydney itself, with a population of 23,000, is unremarkable and not worth much of a visit. 4) Charlottetown, PEI. PEI is an especially picturesque place. As in Sydney, we rented a car here (also from Budget). Budget's office is about a 10 or 15 minute walk from the pier, or even quicker by taxi. It is very easy to drive here (the signage is excellent and the roads are very good) and you'll want to do so you can stop and take pictures of the lovely country scenery. We drove to Green Gables and then to Lucy Maud Montgomery's birthplace and then to PEI National Park and stopped to admire the beautiful red-colored sea cliffs. Green Gables is now a part of PEI National Park and is in a beautiful setting. The gardens and woods around seem like they're right out of the book. I recommend bringing the Anne of Green Gables DVD with you and watching the movie before you come here. After our tour by car, we got back in enough time for lunch on the ship and to walk around downtown Charlottetown, which has a very pedestrian-friendly city center and many historic buildings. 5) After a day at sea, our next stop was Quebec city. We arranged a taxi tour here with Coop Taxi. Our drive spoke enough English to get by with (Quebec has the highest % of French speakers of any Canadian city). This is a very interesting city with a near-European feel. We did a city tour and then out to Montmorency Falls. We rode the cable car to the top and our driver met us there. He then drove us over to the Isle D'Orleans, with its bucolic country villages and farms. We stopped at a local farmers market and enjoyed fresh strawberries. We got back in time to have lunch on the ship and then enough time to walk around the Quebec Old Town. The Quebec Old Town is best seen on foot, so be sure to reserve some time for this. 6) We sailed down the St. Lawrence River to Montreal, which is very scenic. Other highlights of sailing were coming around the tip of Cape Breton Island and seeing the lovely white light house on the scenic, rugged coastline. Sailing under the 9-mile long Confederation Bridge (which connects PEI and New Brunswick) is another highlight. Every port we visited on this cruise had a science framework, so every sail away was great to watch from on deck. 7) Our arrival in Montreal was only marred by an extremely disorganized system for waiting for a taxi. The French Canadians haven't mastered the civility of an English queue and the process of getting a cab was quite chaotic. In Montreal, we stayed a lovely old hotel called the Chateau Versailles on West Sherbrooke. It is a charming facility that was converted to a hotel from two large mansions. The room included a full breakfast and is only a 2 block walk from the Metro. We took a 3 hour narrative Gray Line city tour. While in Montreal, we recommend the light show at the Notre Dame Basilica, visiting the St. Joseph Oraterie and also making a day trip to Ottawa (Canada's capital). This is a lovely city with many beautiful buildings, good museums, and scenery. Via Rail Canada offers excellent direct rail service to Toronto and Niagara Falls. We took the train to Toronto and visited the Falls, then flew home from Toronto. In Toronto, we stayed at the Cambridge Inn & Suites in Downtown Toronto, another excellent hotel. A summer Canada/ New England cruise is not the 'top of mind' destination that people sometimes envision that a cruise should be, but we thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it. Coming from Southern California, we saw a very different part of North America that gave us a new perspective on European history and how the conflicts between England and France in the mid-1700's directly affect how we live today.

Cabin Review

Large Interior Stateroom

HAL cabins are larger than most. Our 3 boys had an especially large inside cabin.

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