Clay was up for the treadmill early. I was up before 7am
when he came back. We traveled very slowly over the next 2 hours to reach our
anchorage at Bar Harbor. I’d like to say it was a scenic sail in but it was
really windy and the decks were very wet so either it had rained recently or the
water had been rougher than I’d thought. Those things kept us from going
outside until we stopped moving. The dadgum dirty windows kept us from enjoying
what must have been a scenic sail in. I have never, ever been on any ship
sailing in any sea, around any continent that has not even made a show of
trying to clean windows. It is beyond all comprehension. Our cabin window is on
the Promenade Deck so there is absolutely nothing keeping anyone from cleaning
these windows every day. Yet ours has only been cleaned once, when Clay took
one of our washcloths to it.
We had breakfast in Lido and then sat in Cove waiting for
9am and immigration clearance or our cabin being ready for the day. About 9am we
went up to deck 13 forward and had a look around Bar Harbor. It was blue skies and
sunshine and about 75F today. The last time we were on land for a day like this
was in Denali! Finally, time to use that sunscreen I packed for the brutal
Arctic sun which we never saw. Crystal was very unclear about the ship’s
clearance by immigration. The letter we got assigning us Group 4 which caused
us to reschedule our Oli’s Trolleys tour to Acadia National Park stated that
once you cleared and had your keycard holepunched that you may proceed ashore.
Reflections implied the entire ship had to be cleared before anyone could go
ashore and this is how it works most of the time in most places. Clay asked at the
desk and she agreed that the entire ship had to be cleared. The CD made one
last call for anyone in the 14 or so groups he had called that had not done so
to go to the Immigration spot they were assigned. Then he wished us a pleasant
day ashore. This was right after 10:30am which would have made us too late for
the 10:30am check in required for the 11am tour we originally booked. So it was
good that we rescheduled that. Clay took this well-wishing to be an all cleared
to disembark announcement, which I didn’t get at all. He didn’t say, everyone
is now clear to go ashore and the tenders are running. I had been watching for
tenders to go ashore until the nose of the ship swung around and I couldn’t see
anymore. So, we don’t actually know how early we could have gotten ashore here.
We were ashore by 10:45am and there was at least one tender ashore ahead of us
as it was leaving as we arrived.
We walked directly through the building at the street end of
the pier and found ourselves at the Oli’s Trolley Gift Shop where we got in
line and went ahead and checked in. They gave us a map to show where we were and
where to line up for the trolley by 12:45pm. We should have lined up earlier
since it was a completely full trolley and we were in the back seat since we
only arrived a couple of minutes before 12:45pm. They didn’t start boarding
until right before 1pm though and it was hot standing in the sun. So, it was a tradeoff.
First we toured a bit by foot. The ship’s port information had a few must
sees. One of them was St. Saviour’s
Church, so we headed that way. It was said to have 10 or 12 Tiffany windows but
there were a lot more windows than that and we couldn’t say which were Tiffany and
which weren’t. We passed most of the other must sees which were art galleries. I
use that term almost ironically because it was a lot of restaurants, bars, ice
cream and souvenir shops selling art as well as best I could tell. Clay got a t-shirt.
He wanted ice cream but didn’t have any because nothing seemed “Maine” enough
to him. We sampled some maple popcorn but didn’t like it enough to buy any. We
went in the public library and looked up because that was on an on-foot tour I
had printed from online. It was nice but not that impressive. We walked though Village
Green and we read a lot of historical markers. We saw Smokey the Bear on a fire
house. We found the Acadia National Park Information Center there by Village
Green and went in and got the NP stamps. I asked about patches and they said
several shops in town sell official park souvenirs. Clay’s t-shirt had come from
one. We had to walk back down through those shops again anyway. We saw all the free
Island Explorer shuttle buses and the schedules were there. This probably would
have been the thing to do but with limited time we wanted a guided tour. Ours
was just too crowded and rushed to be enjoyable. The park service has guided
bus tours at 10am and 2pm that may be better or may not and we’d have chosen that
but we were afraid that neither time would work and they wouldn’t have. Oh
well. It was a beautiful day anyway. We had lunch at a little coffee shop-type
place on Main St. Clay wanted a lobster roll. The first place had a nice
outdoor patio but their lobster roll was market price on the chalkboard. I
think that struck Clay as pretentious and also he thought they’d be too slow and
all I could order there was a big pretzel. We walked on to the Independent and went
in. I could eat sandwich #2 on the board, a bacon, mozzarella and pesto panini
for $9 and his lobster roll $16. That was good and we enjoyed them even though Clay
saw them as low as $12.95. I was excited to see chocolate whoopie pies in a
case for $3.50. I had to have that and ate part of it while I waited for my
sandwich. Both sandwiches came with chips so they were a reasonable value. The whoopie
pie was delish. As we walked back down, I found my Acadia Centennial patch and a
maple whoopie pie at Pink Pastry Bakery. It was really good as we ate it on
the trolley later. Our trolley tour went by the Hulls Cove Visitors’ Center,
the sand bar to Bar Island, up Cadillac Mtn. (15-minute stop), a photo pause at
Beaver Dam Pond, Thunder Hole (15-min. stop), around Otter Point for a photo
pause, and lastly a 15-minute stop at Jordan Pond House before returning to
town. We saw a magnificent Airedale Terrier here. We walked out to the middle of the sand bar to Bar Island and then back
to the ship. A nice day in beautiful weather.
Oh, important lesson. Somehow, we had not learned until we arrived that Bar Harbor is named for the sand bar that you can walk or drive across at low tide to Bar Island in the harbor. Hence, Bar Harbor named for a sand bar.
We sailed on time while paging a missing passenger. Once again,
hopefully that was a records error. Dinner was okay. We saw the boat come
alongside to pick up the pilot. If we have Internet, I’ll post this now. We
plan to go to the 8:30 pm preview screening of the expedition video. I might
have something to say about that later or not.
photos